Italy moves to Airbus A330 tankers
euronews.com
euronews.com
The political factor surely played a role here, but this bit at the end of the article also sheds light on Boeing's decline, which predates the current US administration.
While politics acted as a catalyst, Boeing was ultimately defeated by its own undoing.
The airbus A320 family is associated with 1,490 fatalities, there’s just a vast number of flights daily so tiny risks add up. Companies buying new aircraft care far more about maintenance to fuel efficiency than a few rare incidents due to already corrected issues.
What? The A380 has never had a single fatality or even injuries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A380#Accidents_and_inci...
> Incidents are over five years old have minimal impact in terms of current competition between Boing and Airbus.
Airbus (and Boeing) has a decade-long backlog. They absolutely do. https://flightplan.forecastinternational.com/2026/04/14/airb...
The message here, and it’s granted if you’re not aviation, finance or political aware is Italy keeping their aviation sector EU based being In the EU themselves and most likely getting tremendously better financing.
While the Boeing incidents you mentioned are unfortunate and a true consequence of engineering culture eroding at Boeing, it does not dispel the true safety of aviation in general nor the high success of the 737 Max.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czd2qmdvmq6o
It's the same airplane as the MRTT, A330.
In the case you're referring too, the focus was on poor training and failure to follow up on earlier incidents. It's not the same as designing a system based around a single sensor that is known to fail or forgetting to bolt a door.
Right, they designed the their system with two sensors, and if they disagree, the system gives misleading indications to the pilots! That’s so much better!
I'm not a pilot and I don't know that much about planes, but I've read/watched enough about crashes to know that these sensors fail way too often. To rely on only one already sounds like a bad idea, but it's irresponsible not to tell pilots and train them on how to deal with the new "feature".
That wasn't possible in the 737 MAX because the airplane is an older design with hydraulically connected control services, so a separate system had to be added to force the nose down using the trim.
No other airliner make on earth could have suffered that accident. It would have been extremely obvious what the issue was, and how to solve it on any other aircraft I can think of. This was like a car crash caused by the computer changing how the steering wheel worked mid drive.
I still have no idea how Airbus didn’t catch more flack for that design.
Flying airplanes is not a natural fit for the human brain. It's very helpful to have a computer mediating inputs to keep the aircraft stable.
If you go full stick back in any other airliner, the other pilot will know it immediately, and can physically correct the input. Other planes have stall prevention and awareness in the form of stick shakers and stick pushers that give the pilot physical feedback, and in the case of a pusher makes the pilot physically fight against the safe action (in the case of the MAX, trim adjustment - a roundabout way of stick pushing - was implemented in an exceptionally stupid way that made it overpower the pilots)
This example only serves to highlight how popular narratives take hold and get reinforced by laypeople.
Boeing absolutely deserves to be raked through the coals over MCAS, over their deteriorating engineering culture, and over regulatory capture. But blame them for the things they actually carry responsibility for.
NTSB seems to think it’s Boeing’s responsibility to redesign the cowl to prevent this.
https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/...
That’s not the point regardless. The post I replied to made the claim that Boeing has no responsibility here. The NTSB clearly disagrees.
"Therefore, the NTSB recommends that the FAA require Boeing to determine the critical fan blade impact location(s) on the CFM56-7B engine fan case and redesign the fan cowl structure on all Boeing 737NG-series airplanes to ensure the structural integrity of the fan cowl after an FBO event. The NTSB also recommends that, once the actions requested in Safety Recommendation A-19-17 are completed, the FAA require Boeing to install the redesigned fan cowl structure on new-production 737NG-series airplanes. The NTSB further recommends that, once the actions requested in Safety Recommendation A-19-17 are completed, the FAA require operators of Boeing 737NG-series airplanes to retrofit their airplanes with the redesigned fan cowl structure."
Is your position that somewhere in this 193 page document, the NTSB buried a line that says "just kidding, Boeing is faultless here"?
The engine is built by CFM, and it's CFM who will have to actually design the required fix. Boeing doesn't have the skills for that because the complexity of a modern turbofan is more similar to a microchip than the rest of the airplane. They certainly cost more than the rest of the airplane put together!
The public loves fire-and-brimstone responses to safety issues but the honest truth is that sometimes airplanes crash for stupid reasons and vaporizing all of the accumulated experience a company has following a crash is not going to make things safer.
Even with MCAS, even with the doors falling off, Boeing aircraft are incredibly safe because the US has spent nearly a century working with the company to improve things. This is a tricky thing to get right, because the FAA and NTSB have to unilaterally decide on a system that will make airplanes safe while also keeping them affordable enough to be flown.
From what I can tell, Boeing designed the existing cowl and NTSB says they need to redesign it. The complexity of the jet engine itself doesn’t seem particularly relevant because the cowl isn’t needed to make the engine function. It’s needed to catch shrapnel if the engine fails and flies apart.
> The public loves fire-and-brimstone responses to safety issues but the honest truth is that sometimes airplanes crash for stupid reasons and vaporizing all of the accumulated experience a company has following a crash is not going to make things safer.
No idea why you are saying this in response to my comment. All I said is the NTSB wrote that Boeing needs to redesign the cowl and you seem to think I said Boeing needs to be liquidated.
There's plenty of documentation to be found on the why and how, especially following the 737Max issues: https://team-fsa.com/insights/what-happened-to-boeings-cultu...
> Following the 1997 merger with McDonnell Douglas, Boeing’s robust culture eroded. Subsequent safety issues with the Boeing 737 have put the company under international scrutiny and underscored the profound impact of a weakened corporate culture. As Forbes aptly put it, “Boeing’s current travails about safety issues with the 737 MAX 9 can arguably be traced to the company’s weak corporate culture.”
Or read https://www.library.hbs.edu/working-knowledge/why-boeings-pr... for Harvard's take on the same situation.
I just pointed out in a different thread that software is going through that right now.
It’s a checkmate of the American system. Boeing delegated construction in parts of the country that needed jobs (=politics), who then botched the job and didn’t get sanctioned because it was bad optics to accuse those providers (2013 airframes). More recent events are also a checkmate of the ultrafinanciarization practices, a checkmate of the consultancy / provider / controller model, and a failure of corruption (the FAA/Boeing dinners inherited from the Macdonnell management) in a context where USA rips at the seams (industrial failure, no-one can be trusted as trustworthy) and tries to renew its ideology (apogee with the Trump elections).
That is a fair bit of politics that made Boeing fail.
Patriot systen permanently delayed and price going up and up. Stop payment resulted in the US pulling from the pre payment for the F35s...
Which Switzerland then reluctantly agreed was allowed under the terms.
As you say, totally being taken to the cleaners, and it is unclear how they escape in the short term.
The more this happens though, the more deals like Italy's make senese, irrespective of the performance comparison of the two planes.
If the US is going to be an unreliable partner, that will filter through in many many ways, and the US can hardly blame anyone but themselves (well, I'm sure some fingers will get pointed internally).
Maybe they are and its just a lost cause with the US administration.
It doesn’t really matter if your product is better or cheaper, if the customer thinks that service and spare parts might possibly be withdrawn in the future for political (or whatever) reasons they won’t buy your product.
There is a reason why imperialism ultimately always fails.
If you mean they need to lobby the other governments, I don't think that'll work, the decreasing trust is associated with the US government's actions, not as related to the arms dealers' actions.
They are just as complicit in failing to exercise their power.
He’s a simple creature. Just pay the man and/or his kids off. Remember the funny video comparing Oracle and Larry Ellison to a lawn mower? He is the same.
Sorry everybody but we just have to wait this stupidity out.
It was explicitly created as a way to balance sovereignty of the states against populism, such as that enacted by MAGA or leftists.
If you are a small state like Vermont, you don’t want to just have California, New York, and Texas dictating all rules and laws for the country by sheer weight of their population sizes. That is expressed in the House, but the Senate serves to balance that and ensure that populists don’t run roughshod over the country.
Without such a structure states with less population would either band together and create their own super states - and you can see where this leads, or they wouldn’t have agreed to join the US in the first place.
Yet that is exactly what has been happening twice now.
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(I'm not even going to bother to ask how a movement for police accountability is a 'destructive and authoritarian ideology'. I guess making cops not murder people for no good reason, and then lying about is called 'authoritarian' by FOX, but how can any rational person repeat that?)
If you throw the Senate out you'd just further embolden those in power today.
There does not seem to be any red line for them when it comes to support of the unterfuhrer.
Besides, this is temporary, and even now Republican senators have publicly pushed back on various things. A recent example is the $1.8 bn slush fund.
I would be incredibly against any action to remove the Constitution and civil liberties we have today especially as populism is rising and needs to be squashed. It's very similar to calls from the far-right to destroy the FDA, DOE, or other federal institutions - we shouldn't get rid of them without clearly better alternatives.
So, yes, 50 million people should have more say over the country's direction than 1 million. We should stop pretending we have 55 mini countries, because the Supreme Court has stopped pretending we have a 10th Amendment.
A Republic is a form of democracy. Having a Senate in the structure that we do is entirely consistent with democratic principles. To suggest otherwise is incorrect and counter to established definitions in the realm of political philosophy.
> So, yes, 50 million people should have more say over the country's direction than 1 million. We should stop pretending we have 55 mini countries, because the Supreme Court has stopped pretending we have a 10th Amendment.
Right, like how Donald Trump and his 75 million voters get to have more sway of Kamala Harris' voters (I don't recall the exact losing number)?
Nevermind that the state of Vermont is a sovereign entity in our constitutional republic. To modify this existing arrangement you give opportunity for certain states to leave (pro-Russian viewpoints try break up the US - don't fall for them!) since they are deciding as sovereign entities whether or not to participate in the Republic. If you are upset about the 10th Amendment or whatever then you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and inviting a Civil War or something similar. I say nah to that. We'll keep the existing system because it's pretty damn good.
> Right, like how Donald Trump and his 75 million voters get to have more sway of Kamala Harris' voters
They do in the Presidential race (and only because of FPTP and because we don't have i.e. approval voting), but they shouldn't control the House as well (because trump voters don't always vote R for reps).
States aren't sovereign entities -- they can't make agreements with foreign countries that isn't granted by Congress.
This is incorrect. They can't make "agreements" with foreign countries but that's because of the Constitution they all agreed to, not because they aren't sovereign.
> supreme power especially over a body politic
> freedom from external control
States aren't sovereign. The state legislatures don't even control their Senators anymore. The fiction of "collection of independent states" is just that: fiction. If nothing else, the American Civil War put an end to that. The Senate is just an unjust system which causes California to have to remit 33% of taxes to other states, while those are state's Senators vote to strip the rights Californians wish to have.
that only works if the smaller states are not representative of the larger majority of the population.
instead, nowadays the smaller states are actually over-representative of the populist mass - e.g Wyoming is 80% white.
A lot of the anti-American, anti-Senate, &c. stuff is Russian propaganda precisely because to continue to sow division and encourage populism is to invite destruction and disunity upon the United States.
you seem to not understand my point so ill give it one more try:
senate was indeed formed as a bulwark against populism, but the founders didnt anticipate a 68 to 1 population difference between the largest and smallest states (california vs. wyoming), nor the vast differences in composition of their populations. when a tiny fraction of the population holds that much disproportionate veto power, the senate no longer checks populism, it actively empowers a specific, rural populist minority to override the majority.
You have two things at play here:
1. Population size 2. State sovereignty
You're ignoring the 2nd, but they are inseparable when it comes to understanding the function and purpose of the Senate.
And the rest of the world has to suffer the consequences. It has been incredible watching americans shrugging off any responsibility.
Insufferable hypocrites.
Trump has support from SV and Wall Street leaders, and the whole Republican Party.
> gerrymandered
Trump won the popular vote, and iirc the GOP got more total votes for the House of Representatives. What about for the Senate? Sure NY and CA are big, but so are FL and TX.
This is creating secondary fallout as the orders from various countries get re-prioritized. It is not strictly first-come, first-served order fulfillment; you can find your order pushed back in the queue for reasons.
No lobbying can change the risk assessment where America is the risk factor.
The Gulf states find themselves with too few interceptor missiles and a war in Iran.
The Japanese and Koreans are building as many war ships as they can.
It's just that until recently USA at least pretended to care to not use those provisions too much.
Did they at least use European AI to edit this?
There are plenty of choices for Small and Medium size plane as well as private jet. Why are most commercial airline only buying Boeing and Airbus? And why others aren't making bigger planes to compete?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comac
They have delivered 185 aircraft to domestic airlines. Maybe Africa is next?
Note that they so far use engines from western companies - GE and Safran. In fact, the vast majority of their primary suppliers are from outside of China: https://www.csis.org/blogs/trustee-china-hand/chinas-comac-a...
I guess it takes a bit of a war chest to get into this business simply because it isn't very easy.
There is a third, Embrarer. They have most of the market in small regional jets in some cases, but those are in reality very different than say a 777 or 787.
These two choices are conglomerates of what used to be a much larger set of manufacturers. In short Boeing, Airbus and it's suppliers are basically what is left of all the old big aerospace manufacturers.
This. The entire market has been allowed to be monopolized through mergers and buy-outs. Russia used to have their own aerospace industry (and that fleet was reliable enough to be allowed to fly in Europe) but then Russia happened.
It's absolutely irrelevant what Russia did or could have done here in this industry.
Same with Chinese planes. If they ever manage to make a competitive passenger plane, it will not be allowed certification by US and European authorities purely for political reasons, the same way how their EVs are not allowed for sale in the US or how they aren't allowed to have ASML EUV machines. This isn't a fair game, never was.
The decisions on purchase of aerospace units is 90% (inter-)national politics and only 10% meritocracy, since both Boeing and Airbus are massive defense players making advanced killing machines, and no country wants to directly or indirectly fund the defense industry of their geopolitical rivals.
When a third country needs to chooses between Airbus or Boeing for their flag carrier fleet, they don't objectively compare the operational history and tech specs of Airbus vs Boeing and make the decision based on that, they just ask themselves "do I want to be in bed with EU-France or with Uncle Sam as my main ally and provider for the next 30+ years". Hence why most oil-rich middle eastern states chose Boeing as the US is their main defense provider anyway and don't want to anger them, especially when Donald Orange makes a visit to your state.
That's just how politics works when you operate at that level. Handshakes, dinners and bribes. Always has.
For private jets there are Gulfstream, Bombardier, Textron, Dassault, and as you said Embraer. I think there was a recent new Entry, Honda from Japan.
Which is nothing compared to: 737 (447) 767 (30) 777 (35) 787 (88)
These compete with the smaller versions of the Airbus A320 family (like the discontinued A318 "Baby Bus") or Boeing B737 family.
So, in that narrow-body and regional jet segment there are a few players.
But in the big wide-body (=2 aisles) long-range jets, there's only Airbus and Boeing.
Since topic is tankers, PRC/RU has their own tankers, i.e. for military aviation it's not strictly as difficult since fuel cost less issue. But for strategic aviation (transport/tanking) big efficiency working with commercial chassis / turbofan efficiency.
Neither Boeing nor Airbus make their own engines. They get them from CFM, GE, Rolls-Royce. Like everyone else. That's not the differentiator.
But it just costs insanely much to get an airliner certified. Even Boeing has been held back by its clients demanding a shared type certificate for the 737max which caused all those deaths due to mcas.
There were of course more players but they've been bought up. And some emerging brands that are excluded from our markets due to sanctions like the Chinese Comac and the Sukhoi Superjet. The superjet is particularly affected because some of its systems were designed by western companies like Honeywell and they've had to make last-minute replacements after the Ukraine war that didn't exactly work out well.
And there's some other players. Embraer is creeping closer to the 737/A320 market.
But anyway so it isn't just Airbus and Boeing really.
It's differentiator in sense engine manufactures are part of western aviation industrial complex and can limit access, i.e. COMAC sanctions. Unless you're western core, you do not have guaranteed access. I think Embraer is creeping on to bottom end of narrowbody, but they're far from wide body. And with respect to topic, modern strategic tanking are wide body size, i.e. Embraer E190 is not same heavy league as KC46, MRTT, Y20, Il-78, and Embraer has not demonstrated ability to go beyond regional narrowbody. Fielded widebody options is really just Airbus/Boeing duopoly, AVIC/Xi'an, UAC stumbling along from legacy USSR stack.
Their squircle fuselage works out really well. Really next-gen which makes sense because the Boeing and Airbus designs are decades old. I think they certainly have the chops to scale it up that bit to reach regular narrow body. But I imagine they just don't want to because that might mean trade sanctions from the US.
But I think the restrictions are more artificial/protectionist than actual knowledge. I'm sure sooner rather than later we'll have comacs flying in Europe. The Russian ones depend really on whether they resolve the war situation.
His last odd 'truth' about it was six hours ago https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1166240468099...
Pity, in Hong Kong I cannot read the wise words of the king.
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/airbus-agrees-pay-ov...
When I was in aerospace we lost a not insignificant amount of contracts to Europeans that we had won during the RFP/requirements/evaluation phase because we did not do kickbacks (where we demonstratable win the selection process, but that be told to do a kickback scheme then lose when we said no). The Euros also spread money other ways to make us less attractive. In the US we'd win RPFs/evaluation phase only to lose out in the end due to politics. Sadly aerospace isn't a game of merit. Seemed like Australia, China, Japan, central/southern Africa didn't play games and selected on merit in the contracts we went after.
I didn't just stop reading at this line, I slammed the back button like releasing an emergency exit door.