The boss of Ryanair has threatened to cancel orders with American aircraft maker Boeing and buy from Chinese manufacturers instead if Donald Trump’s trade tariffs push up costs.
Why not buy from airbus
Airbus is extremely backed up in filling orders because of the Boeing fiasco.
Ah, that makes a lot of sense. This is another major reason why duopolies and monopolies are bad for society.
Airbus doesn’t have that “duct tape and bubble gum” feel like a Boeing or Chinese plane does.
I woulda cancelled Boeing orders after the killed the whistle blower and the door fell off mid flight. But what do I know I’m not an airline CEO
It’s a cost/risk calculation. It can still be cheaper to buy the dangerous planes as long as the lawsuits cost less than the savings.
Its difficult to explain but I’ll try:
It’s more expensive.
I’m sorry if I lost some of you. Its just difficult to grasp. You might need a PhD for this.
Remember this morning when you were having cereal… You took one spoon full, then another. That is more! You had one more! Learning is fun!
Why not airbus at least?
The answer is that Airbus has a backlog of 8720 jets, most of them narrow bodies like the A320s that Ryanair would probably want to replace the 737s.
Airbus is looking to expand their production to 75 jets/month by 2027, so if they ordered now, they get by… I don’t know, hopefully someone will math it out for me.
It’s also not in Airbus’s best interest to try and quickly ramp up production as you can get the “Walmart gambit” where you sink in a lot of money, then the tariffs get removed, people crawling back to Boeing and you’re out a shitload of cost.
Not really. Airbus is working on several new designs, and these assembly lines could be repurposed. It’s a pretty riskless investment. Airbus wants to be able to ramp up production, but that is very, very hard to do. building and equiping the factory is the easy part. You have to train people in very complex and specific skills, create seniority scales and workforce structures, etc. and then comes the really, really hard thing, which is getting an already overstrained supply chain up to production levels required by the new line.
Seriously. I’ve been on a couple Chinese made planes. One literally had parts falling off during takeoff. 0/10.
Proposed new slogan:
“Ryanair - Your money or your life!”
Continental Airlines Flight 55, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30, dropped a titanium alloy engine cowl.
Oh no wait, that was the one that caused the end of the Concorde.
Here’s a video by Mentour Pilot about that crash, I love his videos.
warned against placing orders with Comac, arguing that it had close ties to the Chinese military and had likely benefited from intellectual property theft.
Just like Boeing then…
It always boils down to “B-But we are the good guys so buying from our military contractors is no an issue at all”
When Michael O’Leary has a chance to save money, he definitely doesn’t give a fuck about your military industrial complex and its intellectual property.
Fun fact: he supposedly turned down the chance to host The Apprentice, because he’s actually capable of running a business instead.
