- Why isn't Airbus taking the opportunity right
now to attack Boeing? With all of the troubles that Boeing has been dealing with lately, why isn't Airbus taking advantage even when they're
asked about Boeing directly? - We're not happy with the issues that our competitor is having. Well, as it turns out there are a couple of really
good reasons for this, but this is a changing industry with some new players joining, so could there be
a change in this brewing? Stay tuned. (playful chime) Over the past few months,
I have made several videos looking at Boeing's current troubles,
how the company's history has led them to where they now are, and about what's going
to happen to them in the future. Now this one is not
another one of those videos. Instead today, I want to look
at the reactions of Airbus and explain why they
haven't really done anything to benefit from all of their
main competitors' problems. Now, I'm not saying
that Airbus isn't benefitting from Boeing's current misfortunes. On the contrary, some
analysts like Scott Hamilton over in Leeham News have
actually been pointing out that Airbus might actually
becoming a little bit complacent, and Boeing's troubles could well be one of the reasons for that. One example is in the
case of the Airbus A220, which Airbus still hasn't managed to make profitable nearly eight years after the aircraft entered service and six years after they
took it over from Bombardier. Sorting out this aircraft
is easier said than done, especially with the supply chain issues and other pandemic era effects,
but it is probably fair to say that Airbus
might have been much keener to push the A220 in general
if competition from Boeing had been a little bit more challenging. And that brings me
to the first reason why Airbus doesn't have a
big motivation to attack Boeing. They kind of don't really need to. Airbus is already
manufacturing aircraft as fast as they possibly can, and that's especially true
for the Airbus A320neo family. At the moment, Boeing also
has a pretty big order backlog, over 5,660 aircraft, but Airbus
is completely eclipsing that, with a backlog of over 8,600 aircraft, most of which are
for the A320neo family. Now what that backlog actually means is that if you order an Airbus A320 or an Airbus 321neo today, as you do, well then you won't
actually get your hands on it until well into the 2030s. Now like I have explained
before on this channel, Airbus wants to increase
their Airbus A320neo family output to 75 jets per month by 2027, but Airbus doesn't
necessarily want to increase their production
capacity too much more either. Aside from the fact that many of their suppliers might
not be able to keep up, building more lines,
hiring more staff to make them operational and maybe even add
or adjust transportation links to those lines, obviously isn't free. But probably more importantly, this super high demand for
new jets will eventually drop, and scaling down operations when that happens could leave Airbus with an inefficient production setup, with too many facilities and too many people
if they aren't careful. On top of that, at some point,
Airbus will also have to start planning for
the A320 family replacement and also figure out where
that one should be built. Whether or not the next jet will use conventional jet fuel, sustainable aviation fuels or hydrogen, its introduction
will require the buildup of a new, expensive supply chain and manufacturing infrastructure, which will also take time
to get properly up to speed. So with the current backlog now reaching well into
the middle of the next decade, and with a new model
also forecasted to enter service around then, this is something that Airbus
have to plan very carefully for. They really don't want to end up with a complete production strategy focused on an outdated type. But as things stand right now, some airlines like United for example, whose future fleet plans depended on Boeing's still not
certified 737 MAX 10, have reportedly been talking to Airbus for a giant A321neo order instead. But even with their 75
jets per month production plans, Airbus will still struggle
to find the hundreds of production slots that United would need in order to
get those aircraft delivered quickly. And getting them quickly is obviously super important for United, since they had
originally been counting on the 737 MAX 10 being delivered in the start of 2020
and going forward. So for now, United has only managed to secure an additional 35 A321neos from lessors who had ordered them without a particular
customer airline in mind, and remember,
United originally had orders for 277 737 MAX 10s,
so to fill that gap, they will now need
way more in some way. What this all means
is that Airbus, at the moment, is leaving money on the table
by not expanding even faster, and it's even a fact that some customers who might have preferred
Airbus A320 family planes are now ordering Boeing 737s instead since they can offer
quicker deliveries than Airbus can. But once again,
even if it was possible for Airbus and its suppliers to increase production faster, it would be an extremely risky
strategy in the long term, and it could even be
risky in the short term. One of the worrying things that Scott Hamilton noted
about Airbus in 2023 was that their final assembly line for the Airbus A321neo
in Hamburg, Germany was suffering from
some quality control issues. Now, not at the same level as Boeing, but enough for some airline
customers to take notice. So these realities of
airline and lessor demand, production constraints
and the need to safeguard quality, are some of the commercial factors that might explain why Airbus has been so reserved
in their stance towards Boeing. But there is a much more
fundamental reason why Airbus and Boeing wouldn't want
to attack each other even without desperate
airline customers and production constraints. And I'll tell you
all about that after this... After this. After this. Did you feel like you
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where was I before I lost you? Ah, yeah. In my recent Boeing series,
I talked a lot about safety culture and how central it is in the way that aircraft manufacturers should work and interact with
their employees and suppliers. But there is more to
that than just individual lessons for a single
aircraft manufacturer or airline. Safety culture is also critical in the way companies
should interact with each other, so that everyone learns
from one company's mistakes. So what does that mean,
and how does it relate to the reaction of
Airbus on Boeing's current status? Well, a while back I
also briefly made a detour from the airline world
and made a video looking at the safety culture in
the emerging eVTOL industry. The point I wanted to make with that story was that while developing the many new technologies
that these eVTOLs needed, like super advanced batteries and battery management
systems, for example, they also really needed
to share information about the serious problems
that they encountered while doing that,
like batteries suffering from thermal runaways for example. This was actually a big deal, because there were
some cases where companies seemed a bit secretive
about those types of events, treating the details around them
as proprietary information, which, of course,
was completely unacceptable. You see, in the world of aviation where these eVTOL
companies are now joining, whenever any company
learns a safety lesson, they must share it with everyone. In every accident or serious incident, we want the investigators
to find out exactly what happened so that it won't happen again. And to make sure
that this is actually the case and that everyone that comes forward can say what they did or saw, we need people
to feel free to report this without any fear
of any kind of retribution. This is actually a
fundamental safety principle and one of the bedrocks
of aviation safety culture. And it is also for this very reason
that the aviation industry also has another fundamental rule. We never ever compete on safety. Any company that would use
safety as a competition advantage would also be indirectly suggesting that another company
or part of the industry is less safe and that's
completely unacceptable. But why is that then? Well, if you think about it, this would send a very wrong message to put it very mildly, especially to people who
are already nervous flyers. Because if one company
or aircraft type is perceived as more safe than others,
it will give a feeling that the whole industry is less safe and that will
actually hurt everyone involved. So because of that,
aircraft manufacturers and airlines never attack
each other on safety matters. Efficiency, comfort, looks
absolutely, but not safety. Or do they? Well here's the thing, the best way to show
how important this rule is is to see what happens
when a company breaks it, which does happen occasionally. A very early example,
which probably wasn't that bad under the circumstances, involved Boeing and
the de Havilland Comet. Now if you don't know the story about the Comet,
I have done a video on this channel on
my Classic Series featuring that history and the
problems that that aircraft faced. The airline industry learned a lot from the terrible Comet crashes, which involved explosive
decompressions and several issues with its advanced
flight controls and hydraulics. And one lesson was
that the Comet systems were unusually complicated and that the implications
of these complications on training and troubleshooting
were not properly addressed. Then back in 1954, Boeing
flew its Dash 80 prototype, which would later become the basis for the 707
and the military KC-135. But when Boeing rolled out the Dash 80, they weren't going big
on its revolutionary design. Instead, in a 1955
promotional film for the aircraft, they emphasized that despite
its many, many innovations, it was made with simplicity in mind. Boeing also emphasized that this
wasn't their first big jet, since by then they had also made
the B-47 and B-52 bombers, which shared some technologies and features with their new jet. But throughout the video, Boeing kept returning to simplicity. For example, the flight
engineer station was hinged so it could be turned forward, allowing one of the
two pilots to manipulate it if the crew didn't include
the flight engineer, but that didn't really
ever reach the 707. Now, all of that commentary
might seem typical of a promo film today, but remember, this was released in 1955, a year after the two
fatal Comet crashes. Back then, the role of pressurization in them wasn't really fully understood, but the complexity
of the Comet's controls and other cockpit systems
was a known factor in earlier accidents,
which is why Boeing constantly emphasized simplicity
in its own promo video, a clear hint towards the Comet. But then again, since the jet age
wasn't properly established by then and since
Boeing never really mentioned the Comet at all, injecting a note of experience maybe wasn't such a bad idea after all. Let me know what you
think about that one in the comments below, by the way, and when you're down there, please feel free to
subscribe and leave a like. Now, if that kind of promotional video doesn't seem particularly
objectionable to you, you might feel different
about my next example, which is a much more
controversial move from Airbus. Back in 1999, Airbus
was really unhappy with the poor sales
of its Airbus A340 model. Airbus had believed
that the four-engine A340 would be perfect for
long-haul flights over oceans, whereas the twin-engine A330
would be perfect for shorter, high-demand
routes primarily over land. Now, sales of the
A330 went quite well, especially in markets
like Asia, but the A340, which Airbus had thought
would sell even better, was a bit of a flop. In fact, Boeing 777
was completely smashing the Airbus A340 sales numbers after it had entered service in 1995, and that was purely
because it was far more efficient. And since it had approval for extended range twin-engine operational performance standards, or ETOPS, for 180 minutes, it meant that it could
also fly most oceanic routes. As I've explained before, ETOPS made long oceanic flights with twin-engine airliners possible thanks to the improving
reliability of jet engines, meaning that the reduction
in the number of engines had no real statistical
safety implication. Boeing had initially planned
to make the 777 as a trijet, like the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 or the Lockhead L-1011,
but they changed their mind after the 757 and 767 gradually
gained ETOPS approvals, and they ultimately decided
to make the 777 into a twin jet, which was absolutely the right call. Unfortunately for Airbus, though, they completely missed
the boat on that one. And that's actually quite strange, since in the 1970s,
Airbus' first airplane, the A300, became the
first twin-engine widebody to get a two-hour ETOPS approval, and they really benefited
from being more economical than the trijet, something that they, of course,
pointed out in their ads. But back to the 1990s, the A340 now stood no chance
to rival Boeing's 777 in sales. So what did Airbus do? Well, in 1999, they released
this, a two-page ad on the Aviation Week magazine, as well as in other specialised
aviation publications. The text above the A340 reads, "If you're over the middle of the Pacific, you want to be in
the middle of four engines." Now, this ad seriously
pissed off basically everyone. Obviously, it annoyed Boeing since it was clearly aimed at the 777, but it also annoyed most airlines, particularly those flying the 777, but also many others who flew Airbus' twin-engine
widebodies over the Atlantic. And, of course, it also annoyed
the engine makers of the 777, and that's Pratt & Whitney, Rolls Royce and General Electric, so pretty
much everyone who also made the engines for Airbus' widebodies. Now, Boeing, a lot of airline executives, but also others,
accused Airbus of exploiting the unfounded fears of a
traveling public with this ad, and Boeing even added, "To infer that one type
of aircraft is safer or another is riskier, is
inaccurate and inappropriate." Airbus obviously protested
to this feedback, trying to argue that
the ad wasn't about safety and denying that they
were trying to inspire fear. In their version, the ad was
about operational flexibility, like the fact that the
pilots of a four-engine plane with one misbehaving
engine could choose to continue rather than
landing as soon as possible. But is that the feeling you
get when you see this ad? Now, as a general argument for four-engine airplanes,
this kind of makes sense, and if it hadn't been for that
dark picture of that hostile, wavy ocean under the airliner, maybe someone would
have believed Airbus here. And eventually, this
ad was quietly withdrawn, but incredibly, that's not the end
of this embarrassing story. You see, less than three years later, at the 2002 Farnborough Airshow, Airbus put up an advertising banner on the road leading to the show, with an A340 and the text,
4 engines 4 long haul. Yet again, everyone
condemned the ad, and Airbus once again maintained that this wasn't fear mongering. But to many, this
repeat offence just showed that Airbus hadn't learned anything from the 1999 ad fallout. And obviously, to make things worse, this was in the summer of 2002,
less than a year after 9/11, which was a really difficult time for the entire airline industry. In a comment about the ad,
the CEO of General Electric at the time said,
"We are vehemently opposed to what Airbus is doing here. An ad like this is the very last thing the industry needs right now." And that General Electric
CEO was David Calhoun, the current CEO of Boeing. Now, a bit more recently in 2021, it was Boeing's turn to get criticized for raising safety
concerns about their competitor. This time, the aircraft involved
was the Airbus A321XLR, which could actually get
its certification quite soon now. Anyway, this aircraft features a built-in extra fuel tank
inside of its fuselage, which helps it to
get that extra long range. And Boeing raised concerns about how this new fuel tank design would perform in
an emergency situation, when an aircraft makes a
wheels-up landing, for example. Airbus eventually made
some additional modifications to the XLR with a new longer and sturdier belly fairing behind the main landing
gear to protect the tank. But Boeing got a
lot of criticisms online from these comments,
since that feedback came so soon after the
737 MAX and 787 problems, with several articles saying that they were now
questioning the XLR's safety. But to be honest here, Boeing's actions weren't nearly as bad as many made them out to be. IASA, the European
Aviation Safety Agency, had invited others in the industry to comment on the certification
of the Airbus A321XLR, and Boeing was just one
of those invited to comment on it, which is also why they did that, it was actually what
they were asked to do. This isn't unusual, and
it's a public process, although it normally doesn't
get much attention in the press, and I think the big reason really why Boeing got some hard time here was because they were so
close to their own problems. Now, there might be
some other rare lapses in judgment, where comments on safety were made by either Airbus
or Boeing about each other, and you can let me know down here in the comments if
you can come up with one. But the point is that these
are exceptions, not the rule. When asked to comment
about Boeing's recent problems, Airbus' group CEO Guillaume Faury, who is an engineer
by the way, simply said, "I am not happy with
the problems of my competitor. They are not good
for the industry as a whole. We are an industry where quality and safety is a top priority." And other Airbus employees have often made very similar comments. Now to be clear here,
Airbus and Boeing are far from, let's say, gentlemanly when commenting about each other on matters other than safety. Today, Airbus is boasting
about its aircraft orders and deliveries, and Boeing
did the very same in the past when they were a bit ahead. Both Airbus and Boeing
love to highlight the efficiency of their own jets and
often use some really mean ads to dismiss the efficiency
of their competitor's planes. But when it comes to safety, the move fast and break things attitude which certain other
industries are using obviously doesn't
work for aviation. And manufacturers and
airlines don't want to fear monger the public whenever their competitors happen to falter. So could the arrival of a new manufacturer
upset this balance? Is it likely that a new manufacturer would use a different attitude in order to break
up the current duopoly? Well, I really don't think so. Whenever they come,
new manufacturers will likely use the same suppliers and have the same airline customers as Boeing and Airbus does. Those customers will
also likely have plenty of Boeing's and
Airbus's in their fleets, so they won't appreciate it if someone questions their safety. Now there is always a chance for some turbulence
whenever there's a newcomer in an industry, but
I don't think everyone already in the industry will let our
shared safety culture be put at risk. What do you think? Can you think of other
cases of unwise criticism between aircraft manufacturers or do you think that Airbus should be doing something different? Let me know in the comments below. These videos is being made possible by the support of
my Patreon crew and sponsors. If you want to interact more directly with my team and I,
consider joining my Patreon crew and check out my sponsor below. Have an absolutely fantastic day
and I'll see you next time. Bye bye!
