“Boeing drops Embraer name from Brazil commercial jet division” (Reuters):
Boeing Co on Thursday said that after taking over Brazilian planemaker Embraer SA’s passenger jet unit, it will call the division Boeing Brasil – Commercial, dropping one of Brazil’s most iconic company names.
The name change comes after Boeing agreed to pay $4.2 billion to buy 80% of Embraer’s operation making passenger jets with fewer than 150 seats. Embraer will retain a 20% stake. That division is still Embraer’s most profitable and considered a gold standard of Brazilian engineering.
Boeing has not made a decision yet about whether to rebrand the small and mid-sized planes, which currently carry the Embraer name followed by a model code.
Given the recent 737 MAX debacle, a far worse failure of engineering design than anything Embraer has ever done, does this rebranding make sense?
Considering all the defects Boeing has had in it’s lifetime, they will survive, somehow. They should be getting bought out by Amazon.com in the next economic stimulus package.
You’d think they’d be looking to rebrand the 737 line as “Super Embraers”
It is like when Hewlett Packard was bought by Compaq or vice versa, the Hewlett Packard name in test equipment was the gm old standard. Compaq was at least known for computers. So what did they do? Branded the computer line with HP and made up a name for test equipment. Always seemed daft to me.
YeaIt’s not great timing considering the debacle of the 737 Max but my guess is that Boeing had planned this acquisition and rebranding for a long time and never thought about changing their plans. Maybe it was discussed with some long faces at a board meeting or something, but never in public.
The next few paragraphs in that article tell why: Airbus and Bombardier. I think the optics would be a lot worse for Boeing if they let their response to the Max situation influence their other plans for competing with Airbus. It would look terrible:
“The 737 Max problem is so bad we’re ashamed to put our name on the planes made by a company we just paid $4.2 billion dollars for. Fly planes made by anybody else but us, please.”
But I get your point. And if anyone at Boeing reads your blog, they should too Boeing is already being blamed in the media for being a drag on the summer travel season. They need to make all the right moves from now on.
Boeing should implement the latest 737 tricks in their new Embraer MAX: if an on-board computer disapproves of how the plane is handled it should force the right barrel roll.
This clever maneuver will save them serious money as they start transitioning to planes equipped with a single engine (on the right).
Could it be as simple as original company selling the division, but retaining the name?
Boeing evidently think they can do it without too much trouble. Which suggests a possible metric for measuring the strength of a monopoly or cartel: how many plane loads worth of people can they kill before their position is threatened?
For Boeing it’s at least two. But they’re nowhere near the US health care industry which apparently kills about 1,200 plane loads of customers per year. Impressive!