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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm not sure that it's possible to avoid flying Boeing airplanes.  For those that think Airbus is going to save you, you should be aware that Boeing and Airbus have a lot of the same subcontractors and suppliers.  Maybe Airbus is doing better quality control of its subcontractors and suppliers, but an Airbus plane isn't designed all that differently from a Boeing plane.  Moreover, Airbus doesn't even have the capacity to build all the planes that airlines are requesting.  [b]The bigger underlying problem is that we have allowed mergers and consolidation to the point where there are no meaningful alternatives.[/b]

This is a long winded way of saying that more aggressive antitrust enforcement is warranted so that we don't end up in this situation where there is no real choice.[/quote]

I generally agree with most of what you post.  I will say that the bolded is complex- because of how big the investments are required for commercial planes, it is natural that only a few companies would have the capital necessary to take on the risk in developing/building planes. Airbus only exists because of the concerted effort of the EU governments to create it and finance it.  Some place, like the A220, have become too expensive for non-Big 2 companies to develop, so the only option to get them built (and the A220 is considered an excellent plane) is to have one of the Big 2 take them over.  Look at how much money Airbus lost on the A380.  Every other plane manufacturer would have gone bankrupt from that.

All this is to say that the nature of the business (incredibly high capital investments, huge risk, huge barriers to entry) means it will naturally go towards monopoly/oligopoly.  The best option may be to stand up a US equivalent to Airbus to offer more competition- but only the US government would likely be able to do that.  And the odds of getting Congressional support for that are lower than a snowball's chance in hell.[/quote]

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