France vs. USA
I don't normally read the financial news, though I admit I read it more than I read sports news (isn't "sports news" an oxymoron?). But this one caught my eye.
The London Times Online business section reported today that Airbus has lost the lead in aircraft orders to Boeing. Randy Baseler, Boeing's VP of Marketing, saw it coming in January of last year, and wrote about it in his second blog post. Here's a key statement from that post of January 18, 2005:
Along with the A380 being an engineering marvel it also represents a very large misjudgment about how most passengers want to travel and how most airlines operate.
I agreed with him at the time, this way:
When I first read about the unveiling of the new Airbus A380 monster jet, my first thought was, "What a stupid idea."
Jumbo jets can be logistical nightmares. You need long flights with hordes of people to make the effort of loading those behemoths worthwhile.
Baseler described airline trends as contrary to the monster-jet model.
Airbus is calling for a significant shift in recent trends. It believes we will all fly from hub to hub, with one or more connecting flights to complete our journey. Boeing believes airlines will continue to give passengers what they want — more frequency choices and more non-stop, point-to-point flights.
Considering the fact that Airbus has no (Zero. Zip.) orders on the books for more A380s, while Boeing has orders for 19 of its largest jumbo jet, the 747-8, it looks like Boeing is better at forecasting airline trends than the Europeans are.
Current Score: USA 19, France 0
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