Comment by MilStdJunkie | Hacker News Reader

Comment by MilStdJunkie | Hacker News Reader

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Remember the big rollout of the Dreamliner in 2014 to show it was all done, but it was actually an empty metal tube with landing gear duct taped on it? And remember the venom that people got for bringing up the fact that, you know, you could see the sky from the wheel wells? Or the second rollout, when they had to strap the fuse segments together because no one knew where the fasteners were?

Oh we could go on and on, for pages and pages. This story's not anything new.

I think a lot of people in the industry have just been waiting for the thud, but everyone underestimated just how good A&P mechanics are[1], and how tight aircrew is. As we approach the days when aircrew have to punch a de-ice button every five minutes, we're hitting the limits of those staff.

Something to think about: name a commercially successful Boeing-designed product from the 21st century. Something that can legitimately be called "Successful", and "Boeing"

[1] Who are not required in the Boeing fab - oh no - they are far too expensive. But wait, you might ask . . what credentials are required in the plant? Heh heh heh heh heh . . . oh that is a fun question.

> Remember the big rollout of the Dreamliner in 2014 to show it was all done, but it was actually an empty metal tube with landing gear duct taped on it?

It was in 2007 (on July 8th, a date obviously picked for the memes). Maiden flight was supposed to be two months or so away with introduction in 2008.

Maiden flight was on December 15, 2009. Commercial service started October 2011.

> name a commercially successful Boeing-designed product from the 21st century

The MAX was commercially successful before it started falling out the sky. Orders even picked back up after the dip and cancellations from the MCAS crisis.

It's not like customers have much of a choice if they need a new frame, there are 7000 outstanding orders for the A320neo family and in 2023 Airbus built 45 a month, with plans to eventually reach 75 a month (and stabilise there) circa 2026.

It seems like Airbus should be a good investment opportunity: if investors poured billions of dollars into the company to help it rapidly expand production capacity, they'd have no trouble selling every plane they can make.

Sheesh, what the heck was I thinking. Yeah, 2007.

I should have been a little more precise. I mean a wholly Boeing designed product, from the 21st century. The MAX is still a 737 in its heart, and that design goes back a ways.

>name a commercially successful Boeing-designed product from the 21st century. Something that can legitimately be called "Successful", and "Boeing"

Boeing is still able to sell planes to customers, they still have a lot of orders in their backlog. This would only change if their are mass cancellations by their customers.

There is a massive demand for planes right now, airlines rather would own a "good enough" plane from Bowling than no plane at all.

The problem isn't the lack of commercial success, the problem is that Boeing is commercially successful and that there is absolutely no punishment from the market or their customers, because everyone knows that they will continue to make and sell planes.

Its not like airlines really have a lot of choice in manufacturer. Just because the backlog is there doesn't mean airlines wouldn't prefer a different supplier.

And standing up a competitor is not really an option.

> standing up a competitor is not really an option

This is the part that bothers me. Why isn't it an option?

Standing up a new orbital rocket company was not really an option in 2000.

If Boeing can deliver 400 aircraft a year, why can't a startup deliver 6 in the next six years. I don't mean 6/year. I mean take 6 years to build your first 6. Or maybe it takes 12 years to deliver the first 6.

Then aim to deliver one per month for the next two years. Get FedEx and UPS and Amazon to fund you for the next 15 years. By then you could have two dozen aircraft flying real miles, building up experience and trust. Then you ramp to up to 25 aircraft per year for the next two years.

Sure, this means that after 20 years you still haven't replaced Boeing.

But Tesla didn't have to replace GM to revolutionize the industry.

When you become a real threat to take away 50 orders per year you cause visible activity among your competition. Just ask Bombardier.

(I wish I hadn't used Elon as an example twice in the same post, but it is what it is. Like him or hate him, his history is relevant when you talk about what is possible in giant established industries.)

Selling 6 planes is nothing. It wouldn’t even cover the standby aircraft of many fleets. You need large orders to make it feasible, and you need a strong product to secure those orders. FedEx, UPS and co. aren’t going to fund you long term unless you have a product and you need good teams and good funding to even get you to that starting block.

Boom is probably the closest thing to what is suggested but many still doubt they will make it to production. That’s minimal investment though and mostly around options on orders, so they still need massive funding to get there. Rolls Royce and others have said it’s not viable to design an engine for them so now they have to design the airframe and the engine.

Bombardier is an example of why new entrants should be concerned. As soon as you become a close threat, you don’t really trigger competition you trigger massive protectionism which forces them to sell the design to airbus, further consolidating the market

I think the incumbents would have to be broken up to seed any new competition that is remotely viable. The Boeing story has some way to go yet though, who knows

Obviously, selling 6 planes is not the end goal. But you have to sell 6 before you sell 600. Pre-selling an aircraft or two to a few shipping companies would pose a low risk investment to those companies, but provide a great lift for a struggling new hopeful. Look at how that worked for Rivian.

Your example of engines is an excellent point. Repeat that story 100 times to begin to understand the enormous difficulty. Which is to say, it won't be easy. I hope I didn't communicate that I thought it would be easy.

The story of Bombardier is maddening because it demonstrates that if you achieve unbelievably great things technically, you can still be assassinated by a million other attacks. The non-technical parts are what really seem to make this all a non-starter. But victory belongs to the bold.

And wouldn't it be a worthwhile ride to spend the next 20 years building incredibly cool stuff that eventually fails for whatever reason? Sign me up.

This Asianometry video [0] explains why it is so difficult to develop and market new planes.

tl;dr The main obstacles are supply chain inefficiencies and that no one buys planes that aren't cost-effective.

[0] Japan's Commercial Jet Failure https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkmtrsE9Jfg

Great link. Thanks.

I still say, sign me up.

As long as we're playing with somebody else's money it would be amazing to try and try again.

> This is the part that bothers me. Why isn't it an option?

Because a few years ago Bombardier did just that, and US government imposed a 300% tax on their planes. [1] And then a month later complained about Chinese protectionism or some such.

1 - https://theweek.com/trade/88867/us-imposes-300-import-tariff...

>Standing up a new orbital rocket company was not really an option in 2000.

Airbus is the only company in the world which has actually managed to get off the ground in that market. And only because they were essentially a state run business which were subsidized to the extreme, until they actually managed to get into the market.

COMAC in China is trying to do the same, infinite subsidies in the hope of competing.

>If Boeing can deliver 400 aircraft a year, why can't a startup deliver 6 in the next six years. I don't mean 6/year. I mean take 6 years to build your first 6. Or maybe it takes 12 years to deliver the first 6.

It is not like they aren't trying, but it is extremely hard. You absolutely need massive amounts of funding and an investor which basically does not care how big of a money pit your company is.

One major reason for this is that modern airliners aren't that much of an engineer problem, but they are a gigantic management and integration problem. Typical start up approaches do not work.

So everyone else here brings up great points, but something else to consider is that the barriers to market entry are, to some extent, created by the OEMs themselves, by dominating the ISO and AS9100 committees and TWGs/TSGs[1]. This means a couple things.

First, Boeing never needs to take an external audit - they wrote the thing - but their suppliers need to cross every T and dot every I or else they owe Boeing money. In the worst case, a supplier can end up handing over product and STILL owing money. But Boeing - and especially BCA - they have never, and will never, undergo an actual AS9100 audit.

Second, since the standards are existing Boeing process, that represents a pretty much undefined cost for any market entrant. And that cost can be cranked arbitrarily if/when Boeing feels threatened, by amending the specs themselves - as they tried to do to SpaceX in 2010. That's probably a story for later, but it's pretty disgusting, although not as disgusting as what happened to the C-Series. OK, none of those are as disgusting as a million other things, but you get the point.

[1] And, to some extent, the FAA itself, but that's a whole other subject.

I think you need to think of the air company clients: us. If we suddenly would decide "nope, not going to board a Boeing anymore" companies would stop ordering, and then Boeing would experience severe economic punishment for it's actions.

> absolutely no punishment

You might consider that Boeing's stock is down by half.

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