{"id":24644,"date":"2019-10-09T13:53:34","date_gmt":"2019-10-09T17:53:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=24644"},"modified":"2019-10-08T17:06:51","modified_gmt":"2019-10-08T21:06:51","slug":"boeings-attack-on-the-bombardier-fly-by-wire-regional-jet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2019\/10\/09\/boeings-attack-on-the-bombardier-fly-by-wire-regional-jet\/","title":{"rendered":"Boeing’s attack on the Bombardier fly-by-wire regional jet"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“How Boeing Tried to Kill a Great Airplane\u2014and Got Outplayed”<\/a> (Daily Beast<\/em>) has a lot of good background on the Bombardier CSeries (Airbus A220)<\/a>, an evolution of the Canadair Regional Jet that I used to fly. I knew that the airplane had a geared turbofan engine for fuel efficiency, but I hadn’t realized that it was fully fly-by-wire<\/a> (as long as the software works, impossible to have a Boeing 737 MAX-style catastrophe).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The article shows that critical importance of political connections in the U.S. business world:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boeing\u2019s formidable Washington lobbying machine swung into action. Dennis Muilenburg, the Boeing CEO, had already cozied up to President Trump by agreeing to cut the costs of the future Air Force One jets. In September 2017, the Commerce Department announced a killing blow to Bombardier, imposing a 300 percent duty on every C Series sold in the U.S.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The story of how Airbus outfoxed the high-paid Boeing executives is interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One thing that the article does not explain is why Boeing executives moved the HQ from Seattle to Chicago. Why would high-paid workers want to be in Illinois with a 5 percent income tax rather than in Washington State with no income tax? (the family law<\/a> is radically different in the two states as well; Illinois offers plaintiffs unlimited child support profits while Washington caps revenue at about $400,000 (tax-free) for one child)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m not sure that I agree with the conclusion:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boeing provides no end of a lesson in how a great company can lose its moxie because of an indecent lust for short-term gain. It used to be the classic American can-do company. Now it can\u2019t do anything right.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

How do we know that Boeing is imploding due to a decision to seek short-term profits? Since the company’s problems are primarily engineering failures, why couldn’t it be that the quality of engineers the company is able to hire is not as high as in the 1960s? Americans with excellent quantitative skills have a lot more career choices today, most of which pay better than working at Boeing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“How Boeing Tried to Kill a Great Airplane\u2014and Got Outplayed” (Daily Beast) has a lot of good background on the Bombardier CSeries (Airbus A220), an evolution of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-flying"],"yoast_head":"\nBoeing's attack on the Bombardier fly-by-wire regional jet - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2019\/10\/09\/boeings-attack-on-the-bombardier-fly-by-wire-regional-jet\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Boeing's attack on the Bombardier fly-by-wire regional jet - 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