This is just the start of the trouble for Boeing. They are technologically quite substantially in arrears to Airbus, and with none of their products able to pull in particularly hefty profits anymore they don't have the funds to make the necessary investment in R&D to close the gap. The double-punch combo of the 737 MAX scandal and the pandemic will have left them in serious strife.
Off topic, but: I had never heard that usage of "in arrears", and it sounded off because it doesn't even work metaphorically with the usage I do know, so I looked it up and ... "It's a secondary definition, sir, but it checks out."
2. (of a competitor in a sports race or match) having a lower score or weaker performance than other competitors.
Arrears is derived from an old French word that literally just means behind. I've seen it used in English with that meaning in ways that are more generic than specifically referring to payments.
"in arrears" is derived from "en arrière" which is still used in modern French. Like most French words, it evolved from Latin: ad retro.
In modern French, it's used both literally and figuratively. A common folk song goes "3 pas en arrière…" (3 steps backward). Similarly, "arriérés" could mean "people with retrograde mindsets", or "arrears", i.e. rent or taxes that should have already been paid. I suppose the English language merged "arriérés" and "arrière" into a single word.
Yep, e.g. la porte en arrière = the back door. Handy that the English word has "rear" right there in it. And in case this comment doesn't sound snickery/sexual enough yet, there's also derrière (butt or rear end).
Please excuse me as I'll be a tad fussy. You're welcome to pay me back in my own coin with my approximative English.
The right expression is la porte arrière (not "en arrière"), which usually means the back door of a vehicle. Some will more correctly say la portière arrière. It will rarely endorse the other meaning of "back door". Out of context, absolutely no one would see anything sexual in this expression.
On the other hand, la porte de derrière will point to the door which is on the back side, for instance the back door of a house. In some contexts, it may convey some sexual innuendo.
I'd personally say "la porte arrière" for the rear door of a car but "la porte de derrière" for the rear door of a house for instance. I think the distinction is that on a car both sets of doors are side-by-side whereas in a house they're in opposition to one-another. That's my France's French take at least.
Right, but that's the usage I was familiar with: having some debt that you are behind on paying. The parent was using it to mean "performing worse than a competitor", which is distinct.
I guess I use words pretty liberally, but I don't see much of a distinction -- especially when you look at the etymology: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/arrear
It comes from "to the rear". So, in a competition (against Airbus), it means you're behind the person in first. On a payment schedule, it means you're behind the schedule.
Right but it seemed like it didn't work metaphorically because a pretty important part of the definition -- something present every time I saw the term used -- is that you're in debt to someone else, usually with the connotation of them being able to take the collateralized asset. Yet there was no sense in which that relationship would apply to Boeing and Airbus.
Every other time someone was behind, they were just "behind" -- never saw that prompt the use of a legalistic French term the way that "being in arrears" did.
Edit: O...kay, getting some pushback on this. Let me try to explain with another analogy.
Let's say I saw a comment that read, "He got involved in human trafficking because he has a mortgage."
I had only ever seen "mortgage" used to referred to a secured loan for a home.
So I'd interpret the statement to mean, "he has a big debt he wants to pay and needs money and that motivated him to do slimy things for it."
But let's further say I had specific knowledge that that guy had paid off his home loan years ago. Then I'd be confused and say so, "uh, what? He doesn't even have a mortgage."
Then a bunch of people respond to say, "oh, duh, 'mortgage' comes from the French 'death pledge'[1] -- here they were talking about how he had pledged his life to serve the cartels on pain of death." "Oh, yeah, man, I use 'mortgage' all the time to refer to a blood oath."
That ... would definitely be news to me. Sure -- I wasn't aware of people who had used it the other way. But do you see why I would never have abstracted "mortgage" to refer to death pledges in general, even with great abstraction skills?
Note: "Mortgage", to my knowledge, is not used in English in this other way -- I'm just conveying the sense of surprise there to learn that, had it actually been true.
For what little it's worth, I had the same reaction as SilasX here; I've just never encountered this usage before, only the "in debt"/"late payment" usage.
I'm slightly surprised to see that this definition is considered obscure. Perhaps I've been disproportionately exposed to it through my slight obsession with motor-racing :-) Having said that, Boeing's situation is closer to the first definition of 'debt' than you might imagine, if you consider the idea of 'technical debt', a concept that (at least in a software context) most of the HN crowd will be familiar with. The 737 is in a recognisable state of technical debt - if it were a software product, its innards would be written in FORTRAN.
The article is about the jobs disappearing, not Boeing disappearing.
Any such bailout isn't going to be enough to bring back jobs in the commercial aircraft business, which is likely where most of these job cuts are coming from.
The original comment was that Boeing is in trouble itself - and the parent comment was addressing that trouble and what the US response will be.
I agree that those jobs are likely not coming back, but the company isn't going anywhere since the US just lost a lot of clout covering Boeing when the MAX incident happened - they're not going to give up on it now.
Yes, but there's more than one way to save Boeing's defense business and recent scandals have left them with less political capital then they would have otherwise had. There's no guarantee post-bailout Boeing would be the same company as pre-bailout Boeing or even remain a single company.
I'm not so sure about that. Contracts are routinely picked up by others if one fails. Not only this but even if they fail they could partially fail and kill the commercial aircraft arm of the company but keep the juicy defense arm.
Commercial aircraft used to be the juicy part. In terms of actual military aircraft, Boeing now only has the P-8 (success), C-17 (success), KC-46 (debacle), F-18 (success), and F-15 (success). The P-8 is a limited contract, the C-17 is out of production, the KC-46 is just a joke, the F-18 program is winding down, and the F-15 is hanging by a thread. Boeing also sells the AH-64, but it too is a old system that doesn't generate a lot of revenue.
The Pentagon and Congress pushed for defense contractors to consolidate, in the hopes that the skills needed to produce military grade aircraft would be preserved. The US went from having Lockheed, Martin Marietta, Boeing, Hughes, Vought, Grumman, McDonnell Douglas, Raytheon, Northrop, General Dynamics.
All of these contractors were merged under Pentagon guidance into Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon. In the US, these three really have no competition since most military contracts prohibit foreign companies from entering bids.
Agree with most of that but isn't the F-15 alive and well? It's not a stealth aircraft but can be loaded with advanced electronics and 16 long range missiles and use F-35s or F-22s to lock targets for them I believe.
F-15 won't survive in a modern A2D environment without a lot of SEAD support. The airframe on the F-15 are also getting a lot of miles on them. I'm referring to the F-15C types, not the F-15Es.
I don't think they fly the P-8 in the same flight regiment as the Orion used to fly. There's no MAD sensor, and it doesn't have the range at low levels to consistently hit the deck.
ASW has been starved of funds and attention for so long. The P-8 is really an MPA, not so much an ASW platform. It can do some of the job, but compared to the S-3/P-3, it makes some sacrifices. The nice thing is that it can transit an area quickly.
If by US public you mean the common citizenry then no, of course that won't happen. But you can be certain that any public servants helping to grease through the bail out will be given quite cushy positions when they retire. That's the pattern in the US, when something should go to citizens it is instead diverted to politicians while rhetoric about bootstraps[1] is voluminously discussed.
1. Both sides of the aisle have large amounts of corruption and are ineffective to the citizenry - but the GOP really loves driving home the benefits of bootstraps.
Then they can focus on just being a defense contractor. But there's nothing that requires them to bail out the commercial airline business, and it wouldn't be the first time a major aerospace and defense company made this pivot. When Lockheed merged with Martin Marietta, they stopped making commercial airliners.
Boeing is the only American commercial transport jet manufacturer based in the US. The US politically would never allow the loss of this - whether it be “Boeing” or some new named thing that’s basically the same. For pro-global politicians it would be a major signal of failure of American industry, for “America first” isolationists it’s an obvious problem.
I think even from a national defense perspective it makes sense to retain a lot of the talent and manufacturing capability in some ways even if it's no longer WW2 and we can just launch a missile now. Maybe call it national strategy to have talent in a broad array of fields.
Which talent? There's only accounting talents from McDonald-Douglas left. The technical talent was replaced with cheap labor from overseas long time ago. And then there are thousands of bean counters to control overseas labor. You really need those domestic bean counters, that's their speciality.
Boeing will not go out of business because the government will not let it happen. All the aerospace industry starting from Boeing and ending with SpaceX is built on the pockets of tax payers. But, of course, the profits are private.
Yeah, the saving grace for them is definitely their incestuous relationship with the US Government. But while that can save them from total collapse, it can't prop up their civil aviation activities on its own.
The world may not have a choice but to do so; midsize and large planes were already a duopoly, and both had backlogged orders in the thousands. Airbus can't absorb all these new orders, and there are no other options (not for lack of trying; Japan, Russia and China among others are all having difficulties with their state-backed aircraft development programs; the planes are late, overbudget, and generally poorer quality (e.g. shorter range, less efficient)). Not to mention the huge fleet of perfectly fine Boeing aircraft already operating that still need servicing and maintenance.
Boeing will go out of business, it's inevitable at this point. They've outsourced too much of their core engineering competencies, core manufacturing operations, and are mostly a financial re-packager of other people's products. They can't innovate, they don't know how, they can only cut costs.
The workers they're laying off, that's the remainder of your operational knowledge walking out the door. They didn't train a new crop of engineers to replace the aging ones.
I think we'll see Lockheed or Northrup acquire whatever components the DoD needs, and the commercial aviation division will be acquired by another conglomerate.
I dont really agree with your assertion that Boeing is unable to fund future development - they have a big bucket of cash, they appear to have no trouble borrowing, and they have profitable military programs. They should be able to fund a new narrow body jet with ease. Heck, a modernized 757 would be fairly cheap to design/build and its effectively still a pretty modern airframe too.
No, and that's the point. The 757 is already a more capable airframe, for a start, and there's a lot more leeway for the same kinds of modernizations applied to the 737 before getting in trouble. Obvious example, more room under the wings, so you can use newer, larger, more quiet and efficient engines without running out of space and having to resort to the kind of CG-shifting "put the engine in front of the wing" hack that necessitated MCAS and doomed the MAX.
You're still talking about modernizing a 40 year old design....by a company that fucked up a modernisation spectacularly.
>hack that necessitated MCAS and doomed the MAX.
The issue is not that the airframe required it but that the corporate culture looked at this issue and concluded lets do it. Lets do it DESPITE the problems...that's the company you've got leading the modernization of the 757 you propose.
Boeing will pull through with flying colours though. US won't allow their only commercial plane maker to fail even if they need to build planes out of freshly printed Papier-mâché dollars
The 757 is out of production, although the tooling is in storage somewhere. Restarting production would be a huge undertaking by itself, not accounting for modernizing the airliner. It's all blueprints on sheets of paper. And Airbus could quite easily answer with a rewinged, slightly longer A320 (the long-rumored A322) that they admitted to have worked on... Although so far Airbus seems content with just the A321NEO-XLR: cheap to develop, and good-enough to replace most 757 out there (more or less, depending on the model of 757 and the route).
A modernized 767, on the other hand, could be a winner: it's still in production as a freighter and has been modernized for its military variant (KC-46A Pegasus). It's smaller than the 787-8 so wouldn't canibalize sales too much. On the other side the only Airbus competitor is the A330-800 which is too long-range optimized (and thus large/heavy/expensive) to be competitive against a hypothetical medium-haul optimized 767. Really the A330-800 is not even competitive against the A330-900, Airbus shouldn't have built it at all, if you ask me...
In the sense that they can still access liquidity from credit markets, yes. But they're paying a pretty hefty interest rate of 4.50% over the risk-free rate.[1]
That kind of borrowing cost, when compounded, starts to become pretty crippling for any sort of long-term R&D or product development. Compared to a high-grade corporate, a project with a 10-year payback time is 50% more expensive at Boeing's current cost of borrowing.
They'll save the company, but that doesn't mean 12k workers are coming back. And they're mostly concerned with the Defense/Military aspects -- are they going to fund the commercial side too?
(counterpoint -- the USG threw money at auto-makers)
While it doesn't say, these are likely very significantly manufacturing jobs, of course they'll come back. Orders are gone, cancelled, 737-MAX is stalled until the regulatory bits are done sorting out later this year, maintenance needs are way down, so you end up with empty or much slowed factories.
Boeing lays off a quarter of its workforce once or twice a decade. Airplanes are big, long term investments (big airliners tend to live to the ripe old age of 30 or so) and the demand and sale of them comes and goes with the global economy. The economy slows periodically, orders dry up, and factory workers don't have any work for a long time (or more like the years long order queue gets quite a bit shorter with old orders cancelled and few new orders coming in). It's a cyclical business that can't help but to make significant adjustments to its workforce.
A brief, incomplete and possibly inaccurate history of Boeing layoffs:
> The double-punch combo of the 737 MAX scandal and the pandemic will have left them in serious strife.
They're probably just redundant. The 737 MAX debacle meant they weren't going to sell those planes this year, but the coronavirus meant they weren't going to sell those planes this year. Same result from one as both.
I don't think I've heard anyone use the word redundant to describe anything that was more complicated than an exact 1-1 replacement. The two-punch combo is a good analogy; I wouldn't call a punch that knocked someone out cold redundant if it came after a punch that simply gave them a nosebleed.
probably OP means to say given that you got the knockout punch the first punch is redundant not the other way around. Since no aircraft is selling now, 737-MAX issues are no longer relevant is his premise
My understanding is that Boeing has used composites for a wider variety of structures, and more complex structures than Airbus, though I am not the OP, or an expert in the field.
Airbus was the first company to use a large composite load-bearing structure on an airliner, the A300 vertical tail back in 1984.
Most of the A380 and A350 are composite, just put together differently to the 787.
Airbus also now have access to the most advanced composite lay-up technology, used by Bombardier Belfast to build the A220 wings.
The real pioneer was Beech, with the all-composite Starship; it took huge balls to release that on the commercial market, and sadly the gamble didn't pay off. They went back to building aluminium King Airs.
Unfortunately they're just chasing marginal efficiency gains with these. It's much more important to make a plane that's safe enough to actually remain in the air.
> Unfortunately they're just chasing marginal efficiency gains with these
Marginal gains is the name of the game for airliners. A 2% increase in fuel efficiency is something airlines drool over.
> It's much more important to make a plane that's safe enough to actually remain in the air.
Which Boeing unequivocally does. Ya, they stumbled with the 737-MAX, but all the other perfectly good 737 variants are still the workhorse of most airlines. There's still more 737's flying around than Airbus A320 variants (including the A321). That doesn't even account for all the 767, 777 and 787's flying around the world every day... nor all the 747's and DC10/MD-11's shuttling freight too.
> Marginal gains is the name of the game for airliners. A 2% increase in fuel efficiency is something airlines drool over.
It's not if the resultant airplane isn't safe to use. 2% improvement over nothing (because you can't even fly the damn thing) is nothing.
Most of the success stories you're referring to are the old Boeing, from decades past. The 787 had lots of problems but they did eventually get it dialed in with fortunately no fatal crashes, just having lost many billions of dollars in overruns. But their most recent plane is an absolute disaster. They can't keep coasting on the successes of the past without making more successes in the future. These layoffs are prove of it. On their current trajectory, they are failing.
The history of aviation is that of chasing marginal efficiency gains.
Are you trying to make some nationalistic point, or just make yourself sound superior?
Sometimes aircraft crash due to faults in design or user interface; examples include the DC-10 cargo doors, de Havilland Comet, and arguably Airbus' own A330 in the case of AF447. Two Boeing aircraft crashed for a series of reasons, yet Boeing still has a storied history of making very safe, effective aircraft.
> The history of aviation is that of chasing marginal efficiency gains.
Yes, while crucially, making your plane safe enough to fly.
> Are you trying to make some nationalistic point
From the HN rules: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
I'll have you know, I'm Nth generation American, never lived anywhere else. My American identity, however, is emphatically not wrapped up in this one particular company. I can be honest when it's faltering and not doing well without feeling like I'm letting down my national identity. Can you?
This storied history you're referring to is the old Boeing. The new Boeing (the one taken over in a reverse merger by McDonnell Douglas business people) isn't doing so great.
The A-320 was a runaway success which threatened to shut Boeing out of that segment. Boeing needed to do something, and fast. Hence the 737-MAX as a stop-gap until they could come up with a better competitor.
Yes, the A-380 (different segment) did poorly. Boeing actually had a nice thing going for them with the 787.
> Boeing actually had a nice thing going for them with the 787.
Recently, maybe. But the 787 program had its fair share of major issues with the significant delays during development and then the battery fires that led to the fleet being grounded.
If the market shrinks, they'll be hit just like Boeing, but there's also the current lockdown hit where Airbus has an advantage and can wait a bit more before announcing layoffs:
> For now, Airbus is relying on government-backed furlough schemes in France, Germany and Britain to reduce staff costs after earlier asking employees to take 10 days’ leave.
I bet that Boeing will eventually get a bailout that is similarly huge in terms of dollars or euros. But I'll also bet it will be structured significantly different, with far fewer worker protections. That'll end up being better by the numbers, but there are a lot of intangibles that aren't reflected in the number on the bottom line.
For starters, their highest selling plane, the 737 series, is a six decade old obsolete fly-by-mechanical-cable design that sits too low to the ground to fit large modern high efficiency jet engines.
Airbus and Embraer both make substantially better planes in the same/similar segment.
The 737 Max is definitely a rehash if old tech with engines that are in an odd spot. However, the main problem with the Max is not stability issues without MCAS. It's that the took a perfectly reasonable airplane that could fly just fine with proper pilot training. But they decided to be cheap and make it handle like a regular 737 using the flawed MCAS system.
No it could not just fly fine, it is to comply with regulations regarding stick forces when approaching stalls. Putting it on a new type certificate would have meant that all the old designs and solutions that today are grandfathered in by being used for decades safely would have to be updated to modern standards while also losing all advantages of the large amount of certified pilots.
MCAS is a longitudinal stability enhancement. It is not for stall prevention (although indirectly it helps) or to make the MAX handle like the NG (although it does); it was introduced to counteract the non-linear lift generated by the LEAP-1B engine nacelles at high AoA and give a steady increase in stick force as the stall is approached as required by regulation
The 195 has 112 seats vs the 737 MAX 7 with 138 seats. That's pretty similar. And the Embraer is cheaper and has a nicer/more spacious/more appealing cockpit and interior. This is the 737's age showing through here; despite the 737 being larger, it's more cramped inside than the 195.
Granted, most 737 MAX orders were for larger variants, and also the 737 flies farther (the Embraer is very much more of a regional jet). But there's a lot of routes that could be done using either, and the Embraer wins many of those, even before you consider the fact that the 737 MAX flat-out can't fly them at all since it's grounded indefinitely.
So overall they've got superior competition from Airbus throughout the entire segment, and superior competition from Embraer at the bottom of the segment as well. Boeing is in a rough spot. They should have built a clean sheet redesign of the 737 awhile ago to handle the same segment, but they did not, and now they're really suffering for it.
Airlines like southwest need to be convinced to adopt the new plane. Their major claim to fame is cutting costs by only having one airplane that saves training costs and pilots can fly anything they have. (less spare parts for maintenance, but they have already lost that with the max and other variantes)
Boeing deserves the overwhelming majority of the blame here, not one of their many, many customers. Southwest did not want a plane so unsafe that it cannot fly. If their wish list desires were not all reasonable, then it's Boeing's responsibility to let them know it.
That is a different point. Southwest (they are not alone, though they are the obvious example) is not going to buy any plane from someone else because the 737 is so embedded in their company. They can take something else, and reserve the right if Boeing cannot deliver. However it is unlikely anything other than the 737 will be bought in the foreseeable future.
Now if someone built a plane with the same type certificate required with capacity from 25 to 300 (exact bound are of course negotiable) passengers and can deliver in quantity that would catch South west's attention and probably change their entire fleet. I suspect that isn't possible but...
From a consumer's perspective (primarily Alaskan and Delta), I've only flown on Embraer aircraft domestically (not by choice, by consequence), and 50% Embraer for short international hops. From my perspective, your comment rings very true.
I fly the 220 regularly on routes within Europe and it is rapidly becoming my favorite plane for short hops (< 2500 km). It doesn't seem to be as easily perturbed as older planes, nice cabin, very quick turnarounds so rarely issues with delayed flights due to slow turnaround. This matters a lot because once you miss your departure slot on many airports in Europe it tends to get a lot worse right away, not just a few minutes.
I think the better way to describe this would be that Airbus has more of their plane models be on a modern base. All of Airbus models are fly by wire and almost all share the same type rating.
Specifically the 737 and 757 are based on very old designs.
The 757 has been out of production for 16 years, it's just common because it's cost-effective to own and operate for a variety of services.
With respect to type ratings, Airbus shares type ratings between the 330, 340, and 350, but the 340 is basically gone (few operators), and the 320 (their most numerous airframe) is a different type. Boeing has common type ratings for the 777 and 787, as well as for the 757 and 767.
They do. A330/A340/A350 are all on the same type rating. A319/320/321 are on the other Airbus type rating. Boeing has the 737, 747, 757/767 and 777/787 types. Boeing has more type ratings because there is less computerization, all airbus planes fly the same under normal law.
Well, that was weird. A quick Google search doesn't answer it directly but it might be something like:
FAA (and maybe EASA) takes it as 2 types but it only requires a difference training from the 330->350.
From the link: The new regulatory approval means that pilots who are qualified and current on the A330 can already commence their preparations to take the A350 XWB’s controls by undergoing “differences training” only
From what I read the "757-Plus" comments have been widely miss-understood: Boeing is looking at developing a new plane in roughly the same market segment as where the 757 was sitting. They are not looking at restarting the 757 production.
The interim airliner would be an enhanced 767, that is still in production (although not as a passenger aircraft).
Airbus has the A320 line, which is a quantum leap ahead of the 737, and the A220 line, which is another leap ahead of that. The latter, which for my money is the best commercial jet in the world right now, also benefits from not being subject to import duty in the US, which was previously the main reason besides patriotism for US airlines to buy Boeing narrowbodies. In addition, although Boeing's widebodies are not obsolete in the same way as the 737 is, the A350 is probably the best long-haul jet in the world right now. In the past, Boeing used to make massive profits on 747s because no-one else was selling super-high capacity planes, but the A380 squeezed their margins to the extent that they had to pursue the sticking-plaster MAX instead of a clean-sheet replacement.
The only effect the A380 had was to trick Boeing into developing the 747-8, a major failure as a passenger plane, but doing fairly decently as a freighter.
Boeing didn't have the cash to develop a clean ship 737 successor because of the issues with 787 production. Although the 787 has become (pre-COVID) quite a cash cow, in 2011 when Boeing decided to do the 737MAX instead of the NSA it was in a very poor shape: 20~30 billions USD hole, 3 years delayed, and no positive cash flow expected for years to come.
The house was on fire, it was not the right time to commit to a new clean-sheet design, although it would probably have been the right decision (hindsight...).
The 737 was not replaced because of development costs but because airlines that are heavily invested in 737s already just want more of them. Boeing is really squeezed in that situation.
this is not true about boeing being behind airbus. boeing saw the point to point rise and decrease of hub and spoke years earlier and invested in the 787. while airbus has poured billions into the a380, now slated for permanent production shutdown, which may have never been profitable for the company
Completely disagree. You forgot the A350, which appears to be a better plane than the 777x. I also disagree that the A330 neo is inferior to the 787. Its cheaper, more reliable and the fuel burn isn't much different. To say they're "soundly" winning in the widebody market isn't correct, and it also leaves out the fact that the A220/A3XX is outselling the 737 like crazy.
OP was talking about technology though: A330 neo is hardly technologically superior to 787. Even A350 doesn't have some
of the innovations of 787 like not using bleed air
