Posted on 12/30/2004 9:04:13 PM PST by COEXERJ145
"This, by the way, is known as "winning the Viet Nam war", just a lot later and a little differently than we imagined.
Good ol capitalism wins again."
My friend works at Boeing as a mechanical designer, I don't know on what airplane, but he reports that they have contracted a good deal of work out to Russia. He works with guys sent over from Moscow to learn the "Boeing Way", before going back to Moscow to do the work. So maybe parts of these Vietnamese planes will be made in the former Soviet Union -- with the Americans running the show, of course.
That is called "Winning the Cold War"
All you need is a 747. I looked at their fleet info and it seems like they have 11 of them. If they need a bigger plane, I am sure the govt of India can dole out the cash.
JFKerry/McCain Express????
Exactly right...and they would love nothing more than for that to happen.
Great - will have to remember to pull down the shade! :)
Bingo - Airbus is going to lose bigtime on the A380. And I will be very happy to see that! Call it Spruce Goose, Part II, if you will.
The publicized development costs are almost $16 billion, and Airbus says they will break even after 250 airplanes. Huh? That would require a profit of $64 million per plane. Not likely to happen, especially when they are probably selling those things for $150 - $175 million each. They have sold about 139 so far, and it appears that initial demand has been satisfied.
Whatever happens, it will be interesting!
Ah, yes - going through customs and baggage claim with 554+ with your closest friends! Does not sound like much fun...
Bingo! I would love to know what kinds of deals Airbus had to make to convince those airlines to "buy" the planes.
Do not count the 747 out yet - there are still discussions being held of doing another slightly-larger derivative.
These airlines will practically need to give the tickets away in order to fill those planes.
"So you can be patriotic, save American technology and aerospace jobs, poke a finger in the eye of the partly French owned Airbus and at the same time save yourself some money by going pure Boeing"
Sounds like great strategy!
The IL-62 was the Russian and Polish airliner at JFK. It taxied with a wheeled pole hanging from the empennage as it tended to tip onto its tail. Passengers were seated from the cockpit on back as the weights-and-balances thing was inflexible. It relied more on ballast than on trimming as with a US plane.
With an 8,000 nautical mile range.
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