Boeing and Airbus face environmental and technological uncertainty, organisational complexity and geopolitical tensions
crashed near Addis Ababa after take-off on March 10th, 157 people lost their lives. It did not take long for the human tragedy to raise questions about what went wrong. That has fed a crisis of trust in Boeing and in the8, left it flying for three days before President Donald Trump stepped in, suspending allMr Trump noted that Boeing was “an incredible company”. In fact the crash is a warning. After a 20-year boom, one of the West’s most sophisticated industries faces a difficult future.
8 is one of Boeing’s most advanced models. Until this week it has been a commercial triumph, with 370 in operation and 4,700 more on order. The 737 series makes up a third of Boeing’s profits and most of its order book. That performance caps an extraordinary two decades for the Boeing and Airbus duopoly, as a growing global middle class has taken to the air. Over 21,000 aircraft are in use; a new plane is delivered every five hours.
The industry’s technical complexity is amplified by its organisational complexity. In the 1990s a few Western airlines dominated and a handful of regulators had global clout. Now there are hundreds of airlines and 290,000 pilots worldwide. In 2018, for the first time, less than half of the global fleet was based in the West. Maintaining common standards on training and procedures is harder. China and other countries want a bigger say.
Then comes geopolitics. With their hubs in Seattle and Toulouse, Boeing and Airbus are among the West’s largest exporters and a rare example of an industry in which China cannot compete. It would be depressing, but not impossible, if safety decisions were influenced by trade tensions. Over time, China and India may insist that the duopoly make more aircraft within their borders, to capture more jobs and intellectual property. That could require a restructuring of how both firms manufacture.
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