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lifeinthevoid

I’m surprised the stock isn’t doing worse than it is doing currently TBH.

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US won't let its main player in the airliner space go down no matter how many people they kill with their negligence.

The stock market knows this.

The company can continue to operate and wipe out all common shareholders at the same time.

While this is certainly true right now, the clients will eventually revolt and go elsewhere.

Just means they'll get bigger discounts. Nobody seriously en-mass is avoiding Boeing, despite the popularity of the "If it's Boeing I ain't going" rhyme (which itself is a sendup of the "If it ain't Boeing I ain't going" from the 707 days, back when Boeing was an engineering company)

Until they actually get new planes, they still need to pay Boeing to maintain their existing ones

Where? The only other option is Airbus. I would never board a Comac aircraft.

And Airbus has quite a long backlog…

Both of them have ridiculous backlogs. The A320 family has yet to deliver ~7,000 jets out of ~18,000 ordered, and the 737 Max family has only delivered 1,500 jets out of 6,270 orders.

At this point if you're an airline that has to put in a new order, you're not going to see the new jets for close to a decade.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Airbus_A320_orders_and...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Boeing_737_MAX_orders_...

IIRC this is the real reason why JetBlue is trying to buy Spirit. They have wildly incompatible business models, but they both operate the same single aircraft type.

Airbus is their only competitor in the civilian market. The US Government has actively destroyed companies that attempt to compete with Boeing [0].

They’re also one of the top 5 prime contractors in the defense industry.

There is no possible way the US lets its sole domestic airplane manufacturer go bust. I would speculate that the government wouldn’t even want to chance a Boeing bankruptcy.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSeries_dumping_petition_by_...

I’m just a dumb guy who works in construction, if I know the above, then the market definitely knows it.

> Airbus is their only competitor in the civilian market.

I feel that I’ve started seeing Embraer planes a lot more often over the years. If you’ve flown some regional routes, you most likely flew in one of them at some point

Embraer competes at the smaller end of the market. E.g. they compete with the A220, but they don't really compete with things like the A320 or the even larger planes from Boeing and Airbus.

Mitsubishi also tried to build a plane to compete at the smaller end, the MRJ was cancelled though.

Also, yes I flew on an Embraer. It also was the worst plane I was ever on. Everything was cramped and it was notably loud. But not sure that this is true in general.

The one thing I like is that I've seen them in 1-2 and 2-2 seating configurations for the entire cabin. It's quite nice. The overhead space is almost negligible though, it doesn't fit a standard carry on.

Boeing is not the only US airplane manufacturer, it is the only commercial airplane (airliner) manufacturer.

If someone refers to Boeing as the sole domestic airplane manufacturer, I would assume they also know that Cessna exists but are referring to the Boeing/Airbus duopoly.

I’ve never heard anyone else mention Boeing as “the sole domestic airplane manufacturer”, given that Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman are still around. I follow aviation quite closely, and the trade magazines are always quite clear on this sort of thing.

I would say it’s the international repercussions that put pressure:

- Boeing’s home customers don’t really have a choice,

- European customers really have an incentive to switch, even possibly Ryanair, since Boeing is a laughing stock and planes-that-are-losing-doors are a meme for internet-oriented people in Europe,

- But it also has an impact on diplomacy and on american hegemony when everyone turns away from them for industrial competence. And it’s rather the loss of the leadership of the role of the world’s safety organization of the FAA, when it was only the European safety organization who halted this nonsense.

They're a major defense contractor, that's why.

Many of their defense projects haven’t been going well (notably space launch, refueling tanker, and jet trainer).

Does it matter? Where else is the US military gonna go to instead? Airbus?

Lockheed Martin made and still supports the C-5 Galaxy, and Northrop Grumman is making the B-21, so both of those manufacturers (at least) are quite capable of manufacturing large aircraft.

It's still a blue chip with either monopoly or cartel control over their relevant markets.

Until the government acts in a direction that would break up that scenario, you can expect the stock to continue its good performance

Good performance is a stretch. It's down 15% on the 1yr and 50% in the 5yr. Arguably it's a safe buy right now, but that's because, given what you say, it is unlikely to fall further. At least under the current administration.

It will be a slow death.

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