Complacency - particularly a sense of you being on top in the natural order of things - will kill you, one way or another. No empire has ever survived it from the Romans to, the British empire to, well, I guess Boeing. Business textbooks are rammed with stories of complacency gutting market-dominating corporates (IBM, Kodak, Xerox), and the big reckoning seems to be coming for the likes of Boeing, GM, Ford, and many more. In tech, the assumption that the new hot like OpenAI is going to win all seems far-fetched as the complacency is already there.
The interesting thing for me about this particular tale is the commercial genesis of Airbus and the incentives of the management team have led it to catch up despite Boeing have a 20-year head start.
When you're not totally absorbed by the share price, and instead you're trying to build a sustainable long-term business that can pay off decades (or generations), later, you get to make decisions that lead to a more sustainable and trusted business.
themafia · 47m ago
Competition keeps entities honest. Monopolies will kill you. In Boeing's case both figuratively for the business and literally for it's customers.
FirmwareBurner · 17m ago
>Monopolies will kill you.
So when is it gonna kill Google?
dude250711 · 21m ago
> In tech, the assumption that the new hot like OpenAI is going to win all seems far-fetched as the complacency is already there.
Surely, Google here is the cautionary tale? Though I guess it started with the cloud for them.
MaKey · 37m ago
Another recent example is Intel.
scrlk · 28m ago
Ironic, given that Andy Grove's motto was "Only the paranoid survive".
Gareth321 · 24m ago
It has been kind of shocking to see Boeing's decline in real time like this. My whole life I saw them as an unshakable example of U.S. engineering superiority. Reading articles from current and former employees, it sounds like the decline actually began decades ago. It took this long to raid the coffers, so to speak, of talent, good will, and QA redundancy. It is suggested that they are too big to fail, but it will be expensive to re-pad all that redundancy, and I'm not sure subsequent leaders will be willing to lose the next decade of profit in pursuit of regaining their engineering credentials. I think the true cost of this has not yet been realised in their stock price.
mojuba · 46m ago
Makes it even more impressive considering that the A320 is slightly more expensive.
jraby3 · 23m ago
Pricing on these planes is pretty complex. It's a stretch to say that airbus is unequivocally more expensive without comparing various options.
Source: my brother worked for Boeing in sales and has been in the industry 30 years.
duke_sam · 59m ago
It’s impressive that Airbus caught up with Boeing after a 20 year head start. It sounds like Airbus’s bet on the future paid off but the article reads more like a PR piece than a case for why the A320 out competed the 737.
Tuna-Fish · 44m ago
A320 and the 737 were designed in entirely different worlds.
The 737 was designed using light tables and slide rules, to use low-bypass turbofans and direct controls with avionics only on board to optionally aid the pilots.
The A320 was designed in CAD and using CFD, with full digital fly-by-wire, and designed from the start for high-bypass turbofans.
Both designs have been updated plenty since, but because the basic design is much more modern, the A320 is much more amenable to being updated. There are elements of the 737 design that still exist on every new MAX coming off the line that would completely doom the certification chances of any new design, but are still there because they got grandfathered in for 737.
The wonder is not that the A320 finally caught up in sales, it's that the 737 can still be legally sold.
rob74 · 19m ago
> There are elements of the 737 design that still exist on every new MAX coming off the line that would completely doom the certification chances of any new design, but are still there because they got grandfathered in for 737.
Not only that, but Boeing is actually limited in how much they can "modernize" the 737, because doing too much might exceed the limits of the 737's type certificate. This is the reason behind the current engine inlet overheating worries, which has led to an airworthiness directive for the 737 MAX (https://www.flightglobal.com/safety/737-max-awaits-engine-in...) and is also one of the reasons for the delay certifying the MAX 7 and MAX 10. This would be a complete non-issue for other planes, because all modern designs have a switch position that only turns on the engine anti-ice system when it's needed, but the 737 MAX can't have that because the 1967 737 didn't.
kortilla · 34m ago
> The wonder is not that the A320 finally caught up in sales, it's that the 737 can still be legally sold.
What’s wrong with the 737 design that it wouldn’t pass today as a new aircraft? (Ignoring the disaster that was the MAX.)
speedgoose · 29m ago
From my understanding, mostly based on Kerbal Space Program, the aircraft isn’t well balanced when equiped with modern engines.
So you have to constantly apply some controls to fly, done by software.
I love stupid car comparisons so imagine a car with a new engine that is more economical to run, but very heavy on the left so the car constantly want to turn left. But if you apply force to the steering wheel manually or the car does it for you with software, all good. Still a shit car though.
Gareth321 · 14m ago
The main issue arose because Boeing wanted to install larger, more fuel-efficient CFM LEAP-1B engines without changing the aircraft’s landing gear height too much (which would have required expensive redesigns of the fuselage and systems, triggering a new certification process). On earlier 737s, engines were already mounted quite far forward under the wing because of the aircraft’s low stance. The larger MAX engines could not fit in the same place without scraping the ground. Boeing moved the engines further forward and higher on the wing. This changed the center of thrust and lift characteristics. At high angles of attack (nose up), the repositioned engines created extra nose-up pitching moments, making the aircraft more prone to stall. To make the MAX “feel” like older 737s (so pilots wouldn’t require expensive retraining), Boeing added software — MCAS. MCAS automatically trims the horizontal stabilizer nose-down if it detects a high angle of attack, countering that engine-induced pitch-up. The tragedy was that MCAS initially relied on a single angle-of-attack sensor, so a faulty reading could (and did) trigger repeated nose-down inputs, leading to the two fatal crashes (Lion Air 610 and Ethiopian 302).
I think they added redundant sensors which should theoretically prevent this in future. IMHO, I think several issues compound here. They should have redesigned the fuselage. The engineering compromise is bad, but if handled with care, could have been done relatively safely. They opted for no additional pilot training re MCAS. This was a fatal mistake, compounded by them relying on a single sensor. Nothing in avionics relies on a single sensor for remaining in the air. That was insane. There MUST have been engineers screaming about safety who were ignored.
rob74 · 37m ago
Yeah, that was exactly my feeling too when I read that Airbus has "finally" caught up to Boeing. With that head start, catching up was not something that could have been expected (unless Boeing would have replaced the 737, which they arguably should have done years ago already, but that's a different story). Of course, if you look into the details, things get more complicated, since the 737 had an in-house narrowbody competitor with the 757 for some time - but Airbus now has the same, with the A220 competing with the smaller A320 family models (A318 and A319).
jaggs · 30m ago
In my country we have a saying - "Every dog has its day".
h4kunamata · 14m ago
Poised??
Only if a company is completely blind to buy Boeing planes in 2025!
It does not matter if the places are millions of dollars cheaper, all the money spent with lawsuits and lawyers when things go sideways, plus the airline name dragged to shit, I don't think it is worth.
The interesting thing for me about this particular tale is the commercial genesis of Airbus and the incentives of the management team have led it to catch up despite Boeing have a 20-year head start.
When you're not totally absorbed by the share price, and instead you're trying to build a sustainable long-term business that can pay off decades (or generations), later, you get to make decisions that lead to a more sustainable and trusted business.
So when is it gonna kill Google?
Surely, Google here is the cautionary tale? Though I guess it started with the cloud for them.
Source: my brother worked for Boeing in sales and has been in the industry 30 years.
The 737 was designed using light tables and slide rules, to use low-bypass turbofans and direct controls with avionics only on board to optionally aid the pilots.
The A320 was designed in CAD and using CFD, with full digital fly-by-wire, and designed from the start for high-bypass turbofans.
Both designs have been updated plenty since, but because the basic design is much more modern, the A320 is much more amenable to being updated. There are elements of the 737 design that still exist on every new MAX coming off the line that would completely doom the certification chances of any new design, but are still there because they got grandfathered in for 737.
The wonder is not that the A320 finally caught up in sales, it's that the 737 can still be legally sold.
Not only that, but Boeing is actually limited in how much they can "modernize" the 737, because doing too much might exceed the limits of the 737's type certificate. This is the reason behind the current engine inlet overheating worries, which has led to an airworthiness directive for the 737 MAX (https://www.flightglobal.com/safety/737-max-awaits-engine-in...) and is also one of the reasons for the delay certifying the MAX 7 and MAX 10. This would be a complete non-issue for other planes, because all modern designs have a switch position that only turns on the engine anti-ice system when it's needed, but the 737 MAX can't have that because the 1967 737 didn't.
What’s wrong with the 737 design that it wouldn’t pass today as a new aircraft? (Ignoring the disaster that was the MAX.)
So you have to constantly apply some controls to fly, done by software.
I love stupid car comparisons so imagine a car with a new engine that is more economical to run, but very heavy on the left so the car constantly want to turn left. But if you apply force to the steering wheel manually or the car does it for you with software, all good. Still a shit car though.
I think they added redundant sensors which should theoretically prevent this in future. IMHO, I think several issues compound here. They should have redesigned the fuselage. The engineering compromise is bad, but if handled with care, could have been done relatively safely. They opted for no additional pilot training re MCAS. This was a fatal mistake, compounded by them relying on a single sensor. Nothing in avionics relies on a single sensor for remaining in the air. That was insane. There MUST have been engineers screaming about safety who were ignored.
Only if a company is completely blind to buy Boeing planes in 2025! It does not matter if the places are millions of dollars cheaper, all the money spent with lawsuits and lawyers when things go sideways, plus the airline name dragged to shit, I don't think it is worth.