Odds and Ends: 737 faces challenges; 737 MAX and China; American Air

737 Challenges: The Puget Sound Business Journal has this long piece about the challenges facing the 737 from Airbus and others.

737 MAX and China: Meantime, China is, at long last, looking at the MAX for its airlines.

American Airlines: A merger with US Airways makes the most sense, says Aspire Aviation (we agree as long as US management is in control)

6 Comments on “Odds and Ends: 737 faces challenges; 737 MAX and China; American Air

  1. The Puget Sound B.J. article is lacking as well. Airbus has basically stopped selling the A318 (B736 equivalent) and the A319 (B737-7 equivalent) isn’t really selling too well either. The B738/B739 and A320/A321 are the “hot sellers” for the manufacturers and that is where they are going to work their sales on.

    Neither manufacturer have “unlimited resources” to be optimizing planes at a particular seat range, especially given how both manufacturers have been “screwing up” the past few years.

  2. Considering PSBJ couldn’t be bothered to get RAY Connor’s name correctly, that sort of indicates a lack of “fact checking”. Of course, that doesn’t matter when publishing doom and gloom articles about Boeing. Never ceases to amaze me how certain analysts and journals seem to cheer for Boeing to fail, even more so with “locals”.

    • There’s a lot of that self-hatred in the world, for some reason. Puts me in mind of Americans who talk about nothing but how fat and stupid we all are as we land an atomic-powered robot on Mars or Britons who’re convinced that their state schools are free-fire zones when by world standards they’re actually pretty good. That’s just how some people see the world.

  3. Lets stop putting pressure on analysts to comment more favourable on the national champion. The article isn’t incorrect, even if you have another preference. The blind loyal, supportive and enthousiast cheering Boeing got in the 2004-2008 period from many for the Dreamliner, is that the way? I found it scary to see how many were willing to not see what was happening, putting pressure e.g Flightglobal & Flightblogger (e.g to come up with evidence or remove “unconfirmed” news).

  4. I don’t see what the fuss is about. There is really no information in the PSBJ that most here didn’t already know about and it certainly does not paint a doom and gloom portrait of Boeing (Boeing being the local company in Puget Sound and not that other European company, hence no real mention of Airbus, I would assume).

    All I see is an analysis pointing out the challenges of selling their smaller aircraft versions (shrinks of the original and hence somewhat performance compromised) in the face of competition from smaller companies designing aircraft specifically for the under 150 seat market.

    What’s all the hub-bub?!

    As for the other article, all it really seems to say is that Xiamen Air is looking at buying more planes and that the competition still seems to be wide open. All of this according to an unnamed company source. This also might be another Boeing company jumping ship to Airbus, not that it is likely but based on the article, it certainly is not yet unlikely.

  5. No doubt the Airbus/Boeing duopoly in the NB market will be challenged. I don’t see Bombardier and their CSeries being a high volume competitor, however. How many sales in how many years compared to the 32X/737NG? The main competition will almost certainly come from China and they will get the capability to churn out 150-180 seaters in high enough volume to offer serious competition. The CSeries just isn’t attracting the attention needed from the big players and the advent of the NEO and MAX seems to have only lessened the case for this plane at many carriers. What about the lessors? How many CSeries have been ordered by leasing companies?

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