Exterior
Posted on 12/22/2004 7:55:57 AM PST by KwasiOwusu
TOKYO (Reuters) - Boeing Co. could sell up to 50 of its new 7E7 planes to Japan Airlines Corp. (JAL) under a deal announced on Wednesday worth as much as $6 billion at list prices.
Asia's biggest airline joins key Japanese rival All Nippon Airways as one of the first carriers to choose the sleek 7E7, a mid-sized airliner expected to offer low fuel and operating costs when it debuts in 2008.
"We chose the 7E7 after carefully considering both it and Airbus's aircraft," a JAL spokesman said.
A firm order for 30 planes and options to buy 20 more will be signed next spring with delivery beginning around April 2008. The planes are worth about $120 million each.
JAL plans to replace 36 Boeing 767 jets and 22 Airbus A300-600s in its fleet.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Airbus is answering the 7E7 with the A350: a warmed over A330. Basicly, they are going to take the efficient engines that are going to be built for the 7E7 and put them on the tired A330 airframe. That will get them some of the better economics of the 7E7, but nowhere near the total. Further, the 7E7 is revolutionary in its design and look and features. Little or none of that can be incorporated into the A350.
A fair aviation market
Finally, some action toward straightening the skewed global rules.
Wednesday, December 08, 2004 - The Long Beach-built 717, last in a lineage tracing back to aviation icon Donald Douglas, has a tough enough time in the global marketplace without having to face a subsidized competitor. But soon that part of its burden may be lifted.
The Boeing Co. is receiving serious support from Congress and the White House in its efforts to head off still another major subsidy to its formidable competitor, Airbus. The efforts are timely, and a long time coming.
The timeliness relates to the galling fact that Airbus, which has taken $15 billion worth of government subsidies on commercial airliners to help it outsell Boeing, intends to ask for another billion to launch still another plane.
The next subsidized effort from Airbus would be designed to compete directly with Boeing's newest project, the fuel-efficient 7E7, known as the Dreamliner. If launched, Airbus' next effort would come before the company's costliest project, the two-level superjumbo A-380, even gets off the ground.
For years, Airbus has been passing off government subsidies as just a little help in the form of repayable loans to get up and running. But that line never really flew, and it fell dead flat when Airbus overtook Boeing a year ago to become No. 1 in sales.
Boeing admittedly didn't make much of a fuss early on, at least partly because Airbus was picking up market share mostly from McDonnell Douglas, a competitor then but now a part of Boeing.
The market looks a whole lot different than it did in 1992, when the United States and the European Union agreed to a settlement that put limits on subsidies but still allowed European governments to lend money to Airbus at low rates. In the last decade, Boeing has produced one new aircraft while Airbus has produced five.
That must not continue. A private company on its own can't come up with that kind of capital, much less go up against a competitor that uses taxpayers to raise its capital and lower its risks.
Airbus has always whined that Boeing gets indirect subsidies in the form of defense contracts, when in fact Airbus now has more defense business than Boeing; that Boeing got tax breaks from the state of Washington and others, when in fact Airbus and its suppliers are eligible for the same kind of breaks; and that the U.S. foreign sales corporations law (FSC) benefits Boeing when in fact Airbus has like benefits from exemptions to the European value added tax.
In any case, the White House is pushing Congress to get rid of the FSC, as required by a World Trade Organization ruling. That would eliminate Airbus' last feeble excuse for continuing to benefit from stretched-out, low-interest, forgivable loans that give it an insurmountable advantage.
Building and selling commercial airplanes is a tough business, as Long Beach's example of the 717 illustrates. That plane, though based on a platform from a Douglas line that now is extinct, is an engineer's dream of lean construction costs and operating efficiencies. And still it struggles to find a market.
It is only right, for all manufacturers, that the marketplace be made fair.
I never compared either, and never denied Airbus is subsidized.
The way I view Airbus is that if their Governments over there want to subsidize my airline ticket, then fine.
It's a model that hurts the Euros and their subjects, which I neither love nor particularly care about, not me.
Competition is good, even if it is subsidized.
Yes, the interior is much taller and roomier, the windows are MUCH larger, the lighting is incredible..........all things Airbus can't do on their A350 (warmed-over A330).
Yes, the interior is much taller and roomier, the windows are MUCH larger, the lighting is incredible..........all things Airbus can't do on their A350 (warmed-over A330).
Seriously, I don't know why Firefox/Free Republic did that.
I'm not big on flying due to mild claustrophobia (short hauls and empty aircraft don't bother me much at all), but I'd probably be comfortable in a plane like this.
The seats, however, don't look all that comfortable.
Oops, Sorry I didn't think the first post took.
Yeah,
and the feds also pulled the plug when they found signs of personal misconduct - and Boeing is paying a price for it today.
There is NO comparison between contractual dealings between our ONLY commercial airliner manufacturer - who also builds military aircraft - and a state sponsored entity that can write off huge development costs with tax-euros while depressing the sale price of their product.
MD was bought out by Boeing. The only MD commercial plane still in production is the MD-95 - a modernized CD-9 - which has been renamed the 717.
And the project is already more than a billion dollars over budget. I don't think the future of passenger travel is in large 500+ seat aiplanes.
But will they kill off the A340? Airbus has always claimed four engined planes are safer and better for very long routes, because they don't need to follow ETOPS rules. The 7E7 is being developed to compete against both the A330 and A340.
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