How Boeing’s troubles are upsetting the balance of power in aviation
Building the world’s biggest passenger jet, the Airbus A380, demanded a factory of equal stature. But the double-decker airliner was a commercial failure and the 50-hectare Jean-Luc Lagardère centre in the French city of Toulouse produced the last of the model in 2021. Three years on, a facility with a central hangar that can shelter 500 tennis courts under a 46m-high ceiling has roared back to life with renewed purpose: helping the European plane maker fulfil a 7,197-strong backlog for its best-selling A320 series of smaller, single-aisle jets. By 2026, Lagardère will be one of 10 final assembly lines working at a pace of about 75 planes a month. While Airbus’s production lines are humming, its arch-rival Boeing is engulfed in crisis. The dramatic mid-air blowout of a door plug on the fuselage, the plane’s main body, during an Alaska Airlines flight on January 5 has cast a shadow over Boeing’s 737 Max series — a direct competitor to Airbus’s A320 and the American company’s biggest source of revenue in its commercial aircraft business. It was the latest incident in a series of setbacks for the US group. In 2018 and 2019, the 737 Max 8 was involved in two crashes that collectively killed 346 people. This time it is the Max 9, a longer version of the plane, that is in focus. US regulators, which had grounded some of the Max 9s, last week cleared them to fly again. But investigations continue into the manufacturing processes at Boeing and its supplier Spirit AeroSystems, which builds the Max fuselages. Pledges by senior managers, including CE Dave Calhoun, to improve quality and engineering processes have fallen short. The decision by the FAA to freeze the group’s plans to increase production of its Max fleet will hit Boeing’s financial targets.<br/>
https://portal.staralliance.com/cms/news/hot-topics/2024-01-29/general/how-boeing2019s-troubles-are-upsetting-the-balance-of-power-in-aviation
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How Boeing’s troubles are upsetting the balance of power in aviation
Building the world’s biggest passenger jet, the Airbus A380, demanded a factory of equal stature. But the double-decker airliner was a commercial failure and the 50-hectare Jean-Luc Lagardère centre in the French city of Toulouse produced the last of the model in 2021. Three years on, a facility with a central hangar that can shelter 500 tennis courts under a 46m-high ceiling has roared back to life with renewed purpose: helping the European plane maker fulfil a 7,197-strong backlog for its best-selling A320 series of smaller, single-aisle jets. By 2026, Lagardère will be one of 10 final assembly lines working at a pace of about 75 planes a month. While Airbus’s production lines are humming, its arch-rival Boeing is engulfed in crisis. The dramatic mid-air blowout of a door plug on the fuselage, the plane’s main body, during an Alaska Airlines flight on January 5 has cast a shadow over Boeing’s 737 Max series — a direct competitor to Airbus’s A320 and the American company’s biggest source of revenue in its commercial aircraft business. It was the latest incident in a series of setbacks for the US group. In 2018 and 2019, the 737 Max 8 was involved in two crashes that collectively killed 346 people. This time it is the Max 9, a longer version of the plane, that is in focus. US regulators, which had grounded some of the Max 9s, last week cleared them to fly again. But investigations continue into the manufacturing processes at Boeing and its supplier Spirit AeroSystems, which builds the Max fuselages. Pledges by senior managers, including CE Dave Calhoun, to improve quality and engineering processes have fallen short. The decision by the FAA to freeze the group’s plans to increase production of its Max fleet will hit Boeing’s financial targets.<br/>
