The United Airlines CEO says he is “disappointed” in ongoing manufacturing problems at Boeing that have led to the grounding of dozens of United jetliners, and the airline will consider alternatives to buying a future, larger version of the Boeing 737 Max.
United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said Tuesday that Boeing needs “real action” to restore its previous reputation for quality.
Kirby’s comments came one day after United disclosed that it expects to lose money in the first three months of this year because of the grounding of its Boeing 737 Max 9 jets.
United has 79 of those planes, which federal regulators grounded more than two weeks ago after a panel blew out of an Alaska Airlines Max 9 in midflight, leaving a gaping hole in the plane. Investigators are probing whether bolts that help hold the panel in place were missing or broke off.
The Embraer E195-E2, Comac C919, and Irkut MC-21 are three non Boeing/Airbus planes that directly compete with the 737, and are currently being produced.
There is a duopoly in the larger aircraft. But narrow body jets are a pretty competitive market at the moment, despite the huge costs of aircraft development.
The E195 is a bit too small for mainline use, though a good aircraft otherwise. The others however I’m not sure are ready for the prime time.
The Comac has potential, it’s a completely new aircraft developed for the Chinese domestic market, I don’t know if it will be sold in the west though. One issue is that the aircraft market doesn’t lend itself to new players. Planes typically last 30 years give or take, so taking on a new type from an unproven manufacturer is a big risk. It could, however, be successful in the long term.
Irkut is majority owned by the Russian government, and given the war, is likely going to have issues. It has flown, but now they have to move to entirely homegrown parts, which will likely make the aircraft completely shit.
Speaking of, the Tupolev Tu-204. It is still in production, and since the war started it has begun to ramp up again. Unfortunately it still has significant problems. For an aircraft built today, it still uses a three person cockpit crew, and is very underpowered. It also has had nearly no changes since its introduction in 1989, and is way behind pretty much any aircraft of its size.
It’s worth considering how much room there is in the airliner market for more competitors. Since aircraft require a huge amount of R&D, you have to sell a lot of them to break even. So if there’s too many manufacturers vying for a finite market, it gets hard to find any RoI. This has happened a lot historically, it’s like streaming services except you can’t actually get anyone to buy duplicates and very rarely will anyone split their orders.