thumper76 wrote:bigjku wrote:YIMBY wrote:
As both run about three lines for over 200 seat airliners, having two lines for single-aisle airliners would not sound funny.
Both Airbus and Boeing could focus their existing lines to larger capacities and ranges and let CSeries to compete for smaller planes.
But as said, that is unlikely to happen, for political and other reasons, and I second those betting Chinese, despite politics (though the most likely results is that it goes on like before, with some disguised government help as usual in the industry). Embraer also has political barriers and Lockheed is unlikely to return to civilian markets, even though is it one of the few with sufficient resources.
I would not be so casual about the issues of splitting the narrowmarket into two for a big airframes. Airbus and Boeing derive a ton of pricing leverage from building very high rates of one design. To make the C-Series viable you need to get its production rate up to something approximating what the A320 and 737 are. To do that means stretching it and curtailing part of your A320 or 737 production to make room for it. That drives up your cost on those products which neither one wants to do.
Widebody aircraft are more specialized products that command higher price and margin. Narrowbodies are like pickup trucks. Volume and price are huge keys for them.
This has been the C-Series issue from day one. It simply has n chance to be price competitive at the projected build rate. It’s an almost unsolvable problem.
So basically put manufacturers should not care about what the airlines need? To think that the manufacturer knows better than the customer would seem quite odd. I would think airlines would have a far better idea of what they need. By undercutting the past cseries sales and making certain all airlines understand Boeing would do everything it could to make sure the cseries fails, they were effectively killing sales of the cseries. This lack of sales is now your reasoning behind the in effectiveness of the size to be profitable. Boeing started this influence against the cseries well before the Delta sale. When BBD was busy designing testing and building the cseries Boeing was busy looking at whether to build the same size, or continue on their current track. It is obvious what they decided. When they made the decision they already would have had the plan put in place to ensure the cseries flopped. This is big business, it would have been stupid for Boeing not to have done this. Question is do you think Boeing is stupid?
I am not sure what point you are trying to make on this or any other thread frankly. To answer your “points.”
1. Yes manufacturers should care about what customers want but also what they are willing to pay for it. You only build it if you can deliver the product for less than price the consumer is willing to pay. This doesn’t just go for airplanes but anything one produces as many manufacturers have found out to their detriment at times. It doesn’t matter if I build a better computer or phone or tractor if it cost too much. It’s not as simple as saying airlines want the C-Series, what’s critical is what price they want it at and what price BBD can afford to sell it at while making a profit (for the moment they would settle for not hemmoraging cash).
2. It isn’t just Boeing under cutting their price. Airbus has done it too.
http://business.financialpost.com/trans ... ries-dreamhttps://www.forbes.com/sites/richardabo ... 36c6b13657Airbus is described as a mortal enemy of the C-Series and us aggressively undercut it everywhere it can. What you need to understand is Airbus and Boeing do this because they can. What is happening to the C-Series is exactly what would have happened had either of them launched a new narrowbody product. Both looked at it on bigger production numbers and passed explicitly to avoid being in the position BBD is in.
This isn’t some nefarious plan by anyone. It’s a response that both Airbus and Boeing predicted had either one made the same move thus they didn’t do it.
3. It isn’t lack of sales that dooms the program, it’s lack of production volume. To get prices competitive they need to produce at greater volume. This necessitates more investment with cash they don’t have and a broader spectrum product which means more R&D again with cash they don’t have.
They lack sales because the price was to high prior to the bailouts. The lack of sales and cash to invest prevents them from scaling the line to reduce prices. It’s a viscious cycle that comes from two hints they screwed up from day one.
First they tried to sneak in the 300 as not a competitor to the A320 and 737 because they didn’t want to provoke a response. This didn’t work and the NEO and MAX took a ton of market share.
Second they didn’t have enough capital from the start to realistically plan for large enough production scale and to build the three variants they needed while establishing the infrastructure to truely compete with A and B for lower end narrowbody sales. This isn’t anyone’s fault but BBD.
4. The only stupid people here are the management team at BBD who got them into this mess. They are risking many thousands of jobs in profitable fields of regional jets, transportation and services on a poorly thought out and badly underresourced program. Most others saw this coming. Hell the article above from 2015 spelled it out clearly enough and he was critical of the program way before that as an insane idea.
