Airbus Shatters Record for Jet Orders as Demand Soars
wsj.com
wsj.com
I’m not sure if these are connected but I wouldn’t be surprised if they are. Airlines are losing millions of dollars due to grounding their fleet and the fact that it’s happened again cannot help.
The only thing keeping Boeing in the game right now is likely the fact that Airbus is sold out for over a decade.
(see https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/x7jges/777_engine...)
"If I was a billionaire, I would buy a 737 and upgrade the engines to GE9X's "
Boeing refers to that as 737MAX+
The US government will never let Boeing go bankrupt, the impact on their supply chain (specifically nuclear) would be too big. And Boeing know it.
I'm gonna guess that civilian plane starts tapering off with a reputation for expensive groundings (bad for airlines), and for crashes (means the public is gonna be buying tickets on an airbus given the chance).
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/16/dubai-airshow-2023-boeing-or...
You haven't been keeping track I presume. Boeing is bleeding money on recent military contracts like the Air Force One Replacement or the KC-46, because they're on a fixed price structure and Boeing drastically underestimated the costs involved.
So much so that for the replacement of the NEACP ("Doomsday Planes") Boeing withdrew from bidding because they refuse to get into another fixed price military programme, knowing they can't predict costs for shit and will lose a lot of money. They're only interested in costs+ contracts, which nobody seems to be willing to give them.
Disclaimer: I'm just guessing at all of this. I'm no expert. Not even an armchair.
The JSF on a per unit basis is now cheaper then some 4th gen non-stealth fighters, and the idea that it does things "poorly" is not supported by reality.
That remains to be seen. Ukraine has completely upended military doctrine of the last 30 years. Dog fights are happening regularly, and air defense has proven to be far more effective than we could have imagined. The F-35 has never been proven in combat, and it's an open question as to whether its' known weaknesses will matter in a high intensity near-peer conflict.
They're probably also still not fully combat ready.
They are happening far more regularly than US Air Force doctrine calls for, which is never. Posessing total air superiority is baked into nearly every decision.
Software monopolies face this on a daily basis. Much of what we see as "enshittification" from a consumer standpoint comes from single products that need to serve the needs of 3B consumers. The idea of "unbundling" that was en vogue in startup circles from ~2013-2016 is just that startups which serve one use case for one customer base are able to eek out efficiencies that consumer tech giants cannot.
I'm not in aerospace or military so I can't comment on whether the JSF itself performs poorly. How would that even be defined, though? It doesn't have a whole lot of competition to measure against. (Seems like a common thread in these discussions...)
Not sure if Ukraine is showing us that some of those are now useless or not.
It must be difficult to design something like the JSF that has to have a vertical takeoff version and all this other junk to make 4 branches of the military happy. Part of me thinks that having two different planes would have made more sense and lifted a lot of design constraints.
Boeing had tried to get the snakes in Congress to cancel SpaceX's contract at the start because Boeing was clearly the reliable option, we see how that's turned out.
So, this was an entirely predictable own goal by Boeing.
"What do you mean we have to deliver planes that don't fall out of the sky? That's an outrageous requirement!"
This is completely false. For 2022 fiscal year revenue in commercial was $25B vs $23B for defense and losses in commercial were $2.3B vs $3.5B for defense.
https://www.boeing.com/resources/boeingdotcom/company/annual... (Page 58)
How about some engines made with those fancy alloys they've got? Or just a willingness to do an awesome design without all the baggage or need for short term profit.
Also, Boeing isn't buildong aircraft engines.
More or less all capital-B Boeing programs in the DoD side are - at best - unwell, but "terminally ill" is also making a showing. KC46, SLS, CST-100. There was also the AH-64D/E fictional upgrade kit and bad/counterfeit parts, something repeated on the CH-47 retrofits[1] . . honestly, peel back the skin on a successful Boeing program and odds are you'll see a non-Boeing organization or its remnants (or Phantom Works, or some other little island of competence that's somehow avoided the All Seeing Eye). And this is just the surface stuff.
BDS never recovered from the end of cost plus' Glory Days of the GWoT. Fixed price broke a lot of BDS, because no one really has any idea what anything costs, or even how long it takes to do a thing. Sometimes I wonder just how much is left in the core of the org.
My first memory of working with Boeing was from 2010, when a government encryption requirement led me down a long and tortured road that ended with me training an entire Boeing team on what PGP was (we still ended up handling virtually all of that in-house, at cost to Boeing, because it took eight months to get an answer to virtually any question, as both call and response filtered through two dozen levels of management emails). More recently the USAF tossed Boeing a softball project to glue wings and a GPS kit to Mk82 iron bombs, but Boeing couldn't figure it out - they had to subcon the job to Kratos (this was in the news, but was also confirmed anecdotally). Similar thing with "avionics updates" for <redacted> - the "update" was just a request that an accurate pinout diagram be sent with the documentation. Again, core Boeing just couldn't manage that without subconning it out; they literally did not know the pin #s on a standard ARINC connector that they were themselves using. Pretty close to an aerospace company needing a subcontractor to explain what the Bernoulli Principle is.
I do hope I am wrong about B. It's quite possible I've just had really bad luck when it comes to the division I deal with. But sometimes . . sometimes you wonder, "What . . what if the whole org is like that?"
[1] That's a huge theme across multiple BDS divisions and programs, from UAS to F-15 and Super Hornet. I suspect it's also why BGS appears to be made of money.
From the DoD perspective? It's not really possible for DoD to offload Boeing. The old airframes - F-15, F-18, 7X7 derivatives of all flavors - are the workhorses of US jet aviation . . or they are perceived to be the workhorses, in any case.
Ah, "perceived" . . there's a huge, ginormous other subject here, and that is the subject of a peacetime military. Specifically, whether the metrics we optimize for in peacetime have any bearing whatsoever when it comes to a hot war with a peer. History says, "nope!". Tech and metrics optimized in peacetime buildups almost never have decisive roles in major conflicts, for somewhat obvious reasons: the enemy sees it coming. Everyone's got countermeasures ready to go before shooting starts.
The victor - the technological victor, which doesn't necessarily correlate with the winner - is the one that adjusts fastest to combat experience. That industrial agility is really the thing that needs to be optimized. Trade offs of course are aplenty here; if you adjust hardware too fast, you damage your production capacity and your logistics. Case in point: the US in WW2 were probably one of the slowest-adjusting of the Powers, technologically speaking, but none of that mattered a good god damn when US industrial capacity was greater than the rest of the planet combined. Combining capacity/readiness with agility is the magic bullet. When historians say the T-34 was the most effective armored fighting vehicle of WW2, that's what they're talking about. It obviously wasn't the best, or even a good fighting platform, but it matched Soviet industrial capability to a T while effectively countering the enemy. It was the best design for the system it was part of. Internet people get in terrible screaming matches about this, not realizing that mil historians evaluate systems, not hunks of iron.
Anyway, I'm rambling now. Short answer, yes. Tons.
https://simpleflying.com/easyjet-boeing-to-airbus/
Obviously it's more of a challenge, but it's not insurmountable.
Either way I was thinking less about Southwest jumping ship to Airbus and more switching to an entirely new model from either manufacturer. I wouldn't see Southwest going through the trouble of switching to the A320 for example, but maybe to an A320 or 737 replacement. The A320 may be a newer platform than the 737, but it still dates to the 80s (admittedly better than dating to the 60s). I doubt Southwest would want to go through the hassle of changing models just to end up on a 40 year old airframe that they might have to transition away from again in the not-too-distant future.
Depends on the model, A220, A330 and A350 can be ordered for within 5 years.
Update: Delta just ordered A350-1000s, and deliveries will start in 2026, so merely 2 years out.
The A320 order book is approaching ten years so, and wont decrease with sales exceeding deliveries.
That's unlikely. They're in the process of testing out various moonshots (hydrogen powered aircraft in multiple configurations, flying wings, open fan engines), and it's practically impossible to have enough data to engage in a new design so quickly. Especially when the neo A320 family is quite new, selling very well, and has new models coming out soon (A321LR and XLR), and they already have the A220 that can use new engines and a stretch.
Moonshots are good, aren't they? Difference between Airbus and the various Start-Up moonshoots: the former is financed by their existing business activities, while the latter is financed by VC money.
[1] https://crankyflier.com/2023/09/26/the-problem-with-pratt-wh...
Why? Do they bump the rear seats first?
The relatively new “basic economy” class instead of “economy”.
But since the A320-200 is the smallest aircraft in their fleet, maybe the flight was scheduled with a A321neo but got replaced with a A320-200?
Oy. As an American it's rough to see the state of U.S. aviation.
Risk aversion is probably a good thing if you want an engine that will work reliably. But it's not going to produce the next big thing or massively scale output on short timelines.
>On 28 April 2016, Bombardier Aerospace, a division of Bombardier Inc., recorded a firm order from Delta Air Lines for 75 CSeries CS100s plus 50 options. On 27 April 2017, The Boeing Company filed a petition for dumping them at $19.6m each, below their $33.2m production cost.
>On 26 September, after lobbying by Boeing, the US Department of Commerce (DoC) alleged subsidies of 220% and intended to collect deposits accordingly, plus a preliminary 80% anti-dumping duty, resulting in a duty of 300%. The DoC announced its final ruling, a total duty of 292%, on 20 December, hailing it as an affirmation of the "America First" policy.
>In October 2017, as a direct result of the tariffs and mounting financial issues, Bombardier was forced by the American government into an agreement to relinquish 50.01% of its stake in the CSeries program to Airbus for a token CAD$1, and would produce CSeries aircraft in the United States.
>In 2020, amid mounting debts, Bombardier sold its remaining A220 stake to Airbus and exited the commercial plane business.
Boeing will be fine.
That was in reference to the difference in philosophy between Boeing and Airbus about whether the pilot or the plane's computer should get the final say in emergency situations, with Boeing letting the pilot override the plane and Airbus having some protections that won't allow the pilot to do something dangerous (I'm sure I'm oversimplifying or misconstruing details, I'm not a pilot or aviation engineer and it's been a couple of decades since I heard this particular rant).
With the last few years of Boeing's misadventures I wonder what he'd call himself today, "an otherwise reputable computer scientist who sometimes gets on modern jetliners"?
The unit not matching the others are marked as suspect and removed from flight operations-the switch out is not done by software but hard cutover system using relays.
Good design.
So in an emergency a Boeing may allow the pilots to make an input that may overstress the airframe but save the lives of the passengers. Whereas the Airbus computer would override the pilot’s decision and not allow it.
IANAP so I have no idea if that’s true or not.
ECAM memo: "DIRECT LAW (PROT LOST)"
https://apstraining.com/wp-content/uploads/FCS-Airbus-Quick-...
So a software bug could doom the plane?
IIRC, some other flight-control voting system have 3 computers, but one runs software developed independently from the others.
Yes, software is life-critical. Therefore it is developed to a very high standard. Ada is often used.
I think that's correct. IIRC, the JSF C++ coding standard document is floating around.
I think this is it: https://www.stroustrup.com/JSF-AV-rules.pdf, and it appears you're right:
> The MISRA Guidelines were written specifically for use in systems that contain a safety aspect to them. The guidelines address potentially unsafe C language features, and provide programming rules to avoid those pitfalls. The Vehicle Systems Safety Critical Coding Standards for C, which are based on the MISRA C subset, provide a more comprehensive set of language restrictions that are applied uniformly across Vehicle Systems safety critical applications. The AV Coding Standards build on the relevant portions of the previous two documents with an additional set of rules specific to the appropriate use C++ language features (e.g. inheritance, templates, namespaces, etc.) in safety-critical environments.
I still think it is basically true (MCAS notwithstanding).
For Boeing:
The design philosophy is: "to inform the pilot that the command being given would put the aircraft outside of its normal operating envelope, but the ability to do so is not precluded."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_control_modes
I thought there was some situation where an airbus plane though it was landing and cut back on the throttle causing a crash. Can't find it now.
The crew then pulled as far back as the stick would go, and the computer put the aircraft at it's maximum possible pitch-up. Unfortunately that wasn't enough to clear the trees they were flying into. More details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_296Q
A 737 in the same situation would have similar engine challenges. But the crew would have stalled it instead of the Airbus computer avoiding the stall. That would have most likely been a more severe crash than what happened here.
https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-long-way-down-the-cr...
Consider it like a modern car with engine management software. If you floor the accelerator all at once from a low rpm in a very old car, the engine will stumble, if you do it in a modern car the engine management software will inject the maximum amount of fuel that can be burned and not too much, getting you maximum acceleration.
The same applies for the way Airbus controls work. Let's say you want the maximum climb (for example due to wind shear on landing), in the Airbus you push the throttles all the way forward, and pull the stick all the way back. The computer will figure out not to pitch you up further than the plan can handle.
The same manoeuvre in a Boeing means you press the TO/GA switch twice for maximum power (because the engines are computer controlled here as well) but then you pull back on the yoke up to stick shaker activation (stall warning) and manually try to pitch just below the maximum. There is no safeguard stopping you from pulling too far and stalling the airplane. Every pilot can do that, small training aircraft that everyone learns this in don't have any protections either. But the accuracy won't be as good as what the Airbus computers can do and it requires paying more attention.
Now in an emergency, systems failures, the Airbus will downgrade to how the Boeing works. Full back stick will be an unlimited pitch-up and the pilots need to manually figure out what the maximum is.
You're referring to Alternate Law and the more extreme version, Direct Law. One note is that it's not always an emergency that can cause this. If important sensors like AOA or airspeed disagree (for example, due to a temporarily-frozen pitot tube), that will also reduce to alternate or direct depending on the situation.
Unfortunately this can bite pilots badly if they either don't notice or don't understand the new situation quickly enough. There have been one or two crashes attributed to this over the years. [See Air France 447]
I guess all big companies eventually succumb to this fate. It sucks.
For Airbus Industrie 129, it seems that the FCS was not the root cause of the issue, but I don't know a lot about this flight.
Now, I don't want to be too harsh on him. AF set him up to fail (acknowledged by the BEA report), then threw him under the bus. I can understand why he chose the support of the SNPL, even if it meant going at war against the plane.
Are Boeing planes really that much more dangerous than Airbus ones?
And aviation, especially in the U.S., is very much tied to politics, which cares not as much about what might happen, but what did.
With the attention span of last few weeks it is indeed the case.
Besides the serious one you recounted. I find this [1] funny:
https://www.businessinsider.com/airbus-changing-a350-aircraf...
The issues mentioned here about Airbus are manageable, they're not unforeseen parts falling off the plane suddenly.
FAA should today randomly pick new Beoings and do a full inspection and not wait for incidents to happen in USA and posted on internet before pretending to care.
It wasn't the sensors doing that, it was pilots misunderstanding what the frozen sensors are telling them, and what the plane is telling them. That's why the UX has been improved on that, and there's even an estimated airspeed via GPS now to give some indication to the pilots with the best available information.
Overall, I think this is a false equivalence and bad form of whataboutism. Boeing are caught, again, with shoddy manufacturing and design practices, and people harp on "But Airbus aren't better!". Even if they weren't, and they are better, why does it matter? Boeing have issues, those need to be fixed. If Airbus had issues, those have to be fixed too. And Airbus have been working on theirs (like the A350 paint problems or the UX that could be improved when sensors are out) which are, again, much less critical than Boeing's planes flying themselves into the ground or with parts flying off.
This sounds complex, but possibly quite worthwhile.
This is a nice document. Analogies in software operations world!
You don’t need to speculate about what could happen, you have statistics about what did happen. Yes, they are. Not by much in absolute terms (thank goodness) but in relative terms, significantly.
You must be comparing two specific airframes.
The 737NG is the safest airliner ever produced. Boeing is having a rough patch, but anyone counting them out is foolish. They've had rough patches before.
Which to be fair Boeing almost has as well, but for Boeing it's mostly military contracts that subsidize the development of new airplanes that then get reused as civilian aircraft.
American competitiveness and freedom act.
On the other hand, the Quebec government made the boneheaded decision to give incentives specifically to the C-Series. If they had given those incentives to the whole company, Boeing couldn't have complained.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSeries_dumping_petition_by_Bo...
* 500 to Indigo (India)
* 250 to Air India.
* 220 to Turkish Airlines
* 153 to EasyJet
* 100 to Avolon.
Air India are about 60% Airbus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_India_fleet
Turkish Airlines are about 50/50: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Airlines_fleet#Current...
EasyJet are all Airbus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EasyJet#Fleet
Avalon doesn't have fleet information on Wikipedia (I'm not in the industry and have no idea what a reputable place to go to get this information would be)
I'd also point out that US airlines are notorious for holding on to old planes. Delta in particular has an ancient fleet but they are excellent in maintenance so it's OK, it's not like the 737 has done anything to improve the passenger experience in the past 30 years.
Needless to say I am just a cattle class passenger. Upper classes would have better experience. Sure, old planes will last forever and everything in next decades will be replaced by same tight seating planes.
I think the most luxurious experience in US domestic travel I had was circa 2013 on a 767 widebody from NYC to LA but there were times circa 1990 when it was common to get on a 737 from Philadelphia or Pittsburgh to Albuquerque that was 1/3 full which feels spacious but that couldn't have been economic.
The industry here is competitive on price but not competitive on quality. New entrants in the industry have focused on price, but I can certainly imagine a start-up airline that builds a fleet of entirely A220 or E2-Jets around a hub in, say, Texas, could serve almost all of North America and advertise a futurist plane you'll like much better.
What is happening is that for decades, Indian govts have not focussed much on infra development. Current govt, which is in power for past 9 years, has put infra development on a rocket sled, with special focus on highways, railway stations, freight and airports.
Also, air travel is just within the reach of middle-middle class and above. Cirporate bookings are also on the rise.
On the whole, a huge boom is in the works. But dampners include eventual high prices and inefficiencies of logistics and poor management.
Indian are cheap travellers, and cutting 5 USD on a ticket that has no snacks means people will throng to it.
Market is astronomically competitive and consumers are very high price sensitive.
Apple made sure to migrate some of their factories to India is another evidence
As well as US companies lobbying the Indian government to weaken the labor laws
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/03/apple-foxconn-convin...
I have an overall impression that Boeing had excessively chooses profit over safety. E.g., the various 737 MAX problems, maybe other ways as well?
If they have, then I'd hope that losing orders gets them to mend their ways.
But maybe my view is overly simplistic.
Today I learned. For context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal
I met a guy from EADS once, while it was still called EADS, and I was far too young to understand the complexity of what he was talking about. But from what I understood they really do put a lot into managing their supply chain management (very meta), a team he was in. It was a behemoth of an organisation back then and this is just one guy, but I had a feeling they were very open minded.
Well, you have time to decide because that's not what TFA is about.
It's be nice to know how much of this is Boeing and how much is Boeing's customers. 95/5? 80/20? 50/50?
It's hard to believe that Boeing doesn't want to build a brand-new 737-sized aircraft.
It would make sense they’d try to optimize the bottom line for the short term. That’s what most companies do.
You see the headline "Airliners can't take off in Arizona because it's too hot" but the truth is "737s can't take off in Arizona because it's too hot" (737 struggles to take off under good conditions, it takes more runway to take off than planes with 2x the PAX) People say "flying sucks", but it's more like "flying sucks in a 737" (the reason why your neck locks up just thinking about sitting in a window seat on a 737 is because the 737 has a circular cross section that doesn't fit the human body; a plane smaller than a 737 with a more appropriate cross section feels like riding in a 747)
The Embraer E2-Jet is a smaller aircraft that has a bigger engine with better fuel economy because it's not an obsolete design that can't fit a bigger engine. Then there's the A220, bought by Airbus, that Boeing has no answer to and has chosen to have no answer to. For some reason they got possessed to develop several widebody airliners in a row but when it comes to overhauling the narrowbody planes that are most of the units, most of the flights and most of the social and economic impact of aviation, management has been on strike for decades.
The industry has been trying hard to keep you from riding in a modern narrowbody or regional jet because if they did, you'd be demanding it. Once you try the A220 there is no way you'd ride the same route on a 737 if you had a choice. And the thing is the A220 has lower operating costs... But remember, capitalists pay capital costs but they can make you pay operating costs. So long as everybody is flying inferior aircraft they can refuse to invest and pass higher operating costs on to you.
I find it more comfortable as it's a bit wider, the cabin wall is straighter, and the windows are higher up. Possibly it's also quieter.
The overall approach, where they wanted pilot certification to carry over is certainly a business decision, but I'd bet that pilots and airlines and so on liked it.
Similar thing with this door issue. It's likely enough to be sloppy process, and is going to cost them a mint, not save them money. Sure, you can say that compromising quality is motivated by profit, but that cedes an awful lot of the discussion of the consequences of the poor quality to the people that are pushing to save a bit up front.
Not "cost saving" per se, but definitely about money. MBAs are taught that airlines should use one kind of plane. FAA makes it expensive to certify a new kind of plane. So you get this "737 of Theseus" concept where they virtualized the 737 as a "guest", implemented on a different plane "host", leading to the crashes.
They are currently flying them with the adjusted system and a few hours of additional training, pointing to the implementation rather than the approach.
Airbus surprised Boeing when it introduced the A320neo as this was very attractive to budget airlines who were loyal customers to the 737 over decades. There were multiple iterations of 737 up to the 737NG (to that point). Beoing had a choice: develop a new aircraft. This would take longer and wouldn't keep the same type rating so they'd lose their type rating lock-in with the likes of Southwest, who is a huge Boeing customer.
The compromise was the 737Max. It was faster to develop and deliberately designed to maintain the 737 type rating. But it had larger engines and they were moved forward on the plane. This could make stalls easier so Boeing (mostly) silently added a system to "handle" that. That was the infamous MCAS. Lack of knowledge about this and training was what caused the 2 crashes that grounded the Max fleet last time. This was exacerbated by the sensor having a single point of failure. Interestingly, there was an optional upgrade package to have 3 sensors instead of 1, which is more the industry norm for critical systems. 2 of the 3 sensors have to agree.
So Being solved a short term problem but created a long term problem as that 737 lock in was both a blessing and a curse. Existing customers liked the 737 but it was an aging plane that didn't fit changing standards with plane controls, engine design and so forth.
Also, to keep costs low, Boeing has increasingly over the last two decades relied on various layers of outsourcing.
Airbus simply isn't shackled with 50 year old designs like Boeing is. They've made mistakes too, most notably the A380 but between the A319/320/321 (neo and not), A330 and A350, Airbus has a really solid product line. Boeing's 777 was a workhorse for long range wide body aircraft in the same market as the A350. The 787 fits here too but it seems like it's not as popular as the 777 or A350. I could be wrong.
Lastly, Boeing's 747 was a massive cash cow for decades. This is what let them own the airplane market. But 4 engine planes no longer make economic sense. The same applies to the A380. So we have the 777/787/A350 instead.
I cannot believe how many jets and flights there are every second of the day. Looking at those flight maps over the country is insane.
Where is everyone going, all the time.. I need to travel more.
McD-D had for a couple of decades prioritized military/defense/space contracts over civil aviation and had turned into a finely tuned machine for milking government cost-plus contracts. They also had a bad case of Jack Welch management disease.
Over the years after the merger, Boeing's traditional management was largely replaced by the imported profits-over-everything culture of McDonnell-Douglas. This is, to put it mildly, not your grandparents' Boeing any more.
Because the design life of an airliner is on the order of 30 years, it took years to decades for the cultural change to become visible on the outside, but the 737 MAX MCAS debacle is symptomatic of the change in priorities to focus on hitting sales targets over engineering and QA, with lethal results.
(The simple fact that they had to add MCAS to compensate for changed handling characteristics in the 737 MAX isn't damning on its own, although it was a marketing-driven decision: really, at 50+ years old, it's past time Boeing designed a clean-sheet 737 replacement to compete with the A320 family. But then Boeing didn't see fit to mention MCAS in the pilots' handbook. An MCAS failure can cause a 737 MAX to become unflyable if it fails and the pilots don't understand what's going on, and that has led to two fatal crashes. And the 737 MAX MCAS is controlled by a single sensor, introducing a single point of failure. A dual sensor option is available to customers, but at extra cost -- and this is unforgivable. And now we learn that new-Boeing's institutional response is to demand exemption from FAA oversight? It's not looking good!)
The issues of MCAS was that it was added specifically to hide type behavioural differences with previous 737s with the specific goal of keeping the type, and thus the entire purpose of MCAS precluded training pilots on its behaviour and edge cases.
This is the arc of all American companies that prioritize financials above longevity.
How is the clean sheet redesign of the 737 going?
J/K, everyone knows you wake up in the morning and think about how much stock to buy back and not much else. Do you even remember what Boeing used to do? Do you play parlor games where you try to guess? "Did we used to make books? Did we used to make soup?" "Ha ha! Who cares, I've got a meeting with analysts to discuss our buyback schedule" I bet it's an SNL skit every single day there.
Another question:
Why did you move HQ to Chicago? Was it really just to get far away from those pesky engineers that don't know a thing about hyperfinancialization?
But on the development side, the situation is less clear. There is no major development project anymore since A350 is in operation. And there are no signs yet of an upcoming major program based on their research activities for hydrogen-powered of more electric airliners.
So there could still be layoffs or downsizing due to hiring less engineers than the ones that go to retirement.
Even with record profits and huge backlog companies nowadays can do layoffs to please shareholders. Like Microsoft did.
There is no such thing as job security anymore. Successful companies can do layoffs anytime. Why not to layoff people if they can hire in cheaper locations?
Depends. Airbus probably has a strong union in France so mass layoffs especailly during pofitable times seem as likely as contact with aliens.
Well, not having a complete new aircraft doesn't mean there is no activities. A320neo is leaps and bounds ahead on the market. While Boeing seriously needs a new aircraft in that segment, Airbus can happily modernise the A320 some more. As for new developments, they likely need to integrate the A220 into their lineup, streamline the issues they had with it, and many think that the A320 successor will likely be based on the A220, making the A220 much more important to Airbus than it seems. There are rumours about a A220-500 which will have different engines than the smaller ones. In the meantime, it's known that Boeing doesn't plan to release anything anytime soon until a new generation of much more efficient engines comes in, even though it's an uncertainty when will it be.
Also, it seems that A350-1000 and A330neo sales are somewhat underwhelming, they cannot compete against the 777X or 787. By some reports, the RR engine in the A350-1000 needs too much maintenance in the hot climates of the Middle East, where a lot of wide bodies are sold.
All in all, they have their work cut on multiple fronts.
I don't think Airbus wants a repeat of the A380.
Plus last I'd checked Boeing declared they're not working on a new frame for at least a decade, and Airbus is competitive right now, so the incentive is limited: Comac is up and coming, but it's still a way away (and is missing the entire support network).