Outside of the passengers market you also have the freight market which is very important for those large planes. In the last 5 years Boeing sold mainly if not exclusively freight versions of the 747. In this market the 787 is simply not a real competitor as it is much more expensive to operate except on extremly long routes (read extremly long routes as the route London-Sydney which is totally unimportant in comparison with for example Japan-Europe).

ps. Planning for the 747 started in 66 and first fight was in 69

I will confess to not being all to indoctrinated in aviation, though I have friends and business partners who are.

Boeing partnering with the Japanese on plane design is not so odd, since they respect intellectual property. China and India? Well, let’s say that those 2.5 billion people can account for 1 sale of each DVD the US makes… and that’s about it.

Boeing has the winning strategy overall. The 380 can make alot of noise, but the efficiency per passenger depends on the plane being full. And fewer than anticipated airports are willing to modify (especially in this tight air market) their runways and terminals for the additional size/wieght of the 380.

Nope. The 7E7 is going to win the day in the long run. The estimated market for 380’s worldwide is less than 400. And that is viewed as optimistic. I’d be surprised if it topped 250.

So, while the “euros” celebrate their largest commercial airplane ever (the 747 was released in, what… 1976?) It’s 30 years past its mark. The US did that 30 years ago, and now the industry is all about making money. Something the Yanks excel at…

Oh darn! Where did my vowels go!

There are only three really high tech parts of a plane.
The electronics like radar which you buy on the open market because commercial airplanes are in reality only a small part of this market.
The engines which neither Boeing or Airbus make. That knowledge is also very usefull in building other types of turbines and as such airplanes are not really the main market for those technologies.
And as last the wing design. Its form is the real decider in how fuel efficient a plane is and the knowledge behind it can only be obtained by years of craft. So exporting that knowledge to Japan is really smart for Boeing *cough*

Making the fuselage, assembly of the plane etc are all compareable low tech industries which are easy to upgrade from the technology used by the many aircraft companies that make smaller plains. Besides China had already an assembly plant for McDonald Douglas.

ps. Moving the wing design to China is stupid whatever the costadvantage is. Moving the wing assembly of the A320 to China is IMNSHO not so smart but you must make sure they don’t obtain design knowledge.

Are’t the wings of the lastest Boeing 787 being build in Japan?

Up to a point only. I want to see this only if it doesn’t hurt the part already rich.

Absolutely Bob, very good point.

“Actually, to build a factory in china is a sign of desperation.”

And not to build a factory in China, what is that a sign of?

Basically there is a kind of prisoners dilemna situation for the owners of techology these days, which revolves around how quickly to let go of it. Boeing can keep its technology to itself, stay out of China, lose 1,700 aircraft inside China, and lose China as a platform for a joint venture to sell to the rest of the developing world.

Or they can do what airbus is doing, and take a lower cut on each plane, but sell more planes, and try to head off (which may or may not work) China’s drive to ‘go it alone’. A joint venture where we in Europe work the cutting edge technology, design etc, and we take advantage of the lower manufacturing opportunities that China offers seems to be a good bet.

Maynard is absolutely right. China - like Japan - will eventually be doing the cutting end technology for itself, but maybe we just bought ten years (minimum) or a generation. Time will tell.

Really Maynard is also right that many are in denial on China, manufacturing in many sectors will move to China (or India, see Sebastian Mallaby this week on Chennai). This won’t be just footwear and textiles as China moves up the value chain, but cars, aircraft and rocket techology.

Basically, if you are interested in the poor part of the world getting rich, this can only be good news. Isn’t that what globalisation was supposed to be all about. Well, finally it seems to be working, and I for one am happy.

And China is incapable of designing wings themselves?
What you have bought is ten years of profits, and some goodwill.

The US is still in denial about China. They seem to imagine that they (and possibly the other white-skinned folks in Europe) are the only smart people in the world, the only ones capable of building airplanes, radar, advanced CPUs and so on. Even those everyday facts that confront them (eg Prius, LCDs pretty much exclusively made in Asia, white light LEDs) that are simply tuned out.

With 2 billion+ people in India and China, and with an education system that appears to be rather more devoted to science (and certainly to engineering) than the US, this sort of stuff is going to happen, like it or not. China has already threatened, in the case of both DVDs and cell-phones to roll out their own standards, every bit the quality equal of those invented by the west, because they felt the licensing terms imposed on them were too onerous. (It’s not clear to me just how this has played out, whether they got lower terms, or whether they have actually rolled out products based on those standards yet — perhaps another reader has details.)