Let’s take a diversion from Boeing’s Soap Opera over the 787 Line 2 and will-they-stay-or-will-they-go.
CNBC has a long piece plus several video clips with Ralph Crosby, the CEO of EADS North America, on the KC-X tanker issue. It’s well worth reading.
Well, we’re almost diverting from the Soap Opera. The Mobile Press-Register has a piece on the irony of Boeing Commercial Airplanes maybe planning to build the 787 in Charleston on a business model that is pretty close to the one Northrop Grumman and EADS plan to use to build the KC-30 tanker.
Interesting that Jane raised the subject of the AF 447 accident investigation. Does anyone out there think t his will play in the tanker competition?
will we take into account the 777 that “fell out of the sky” at LHR a few months back – the 737 at Amsterdam?
incidents and/or accident may be (ab)used by politicians to swing the sympathy vote – but they should never be part of any objective competition
neither should the WTO case
ikkeman, its a question, not an accusation, so relax. There is a fundamental difference between the events yo pint out and AF 447: we know what caused the 777 and 737 accidents. This is a BIG difference. Perhaps the French, AF, and EADS should really consider an “frontier expanding” oceanographic salvage effort to put this thing to rest?
Sorry, didn’t mean to come over as agressive.
No, it’s not a big difference. The only difference is time. and for those rare incidents/accidents that remain a mystery for ever – both Boeing and Airbus (and and any other long(er) term player on the aircraft manufacturer field) has their fair share of such.
If no technical issue can be discerned, how could you disprove terrorism or even suicide en masse by the pilot – It’s all happened before.
Though it may (or may not) help find the cause(s) for this tragidy – there should also be some form of cost vs reward analysis. I’m not saying an “frontier expanding” effort shouldn’t be performed – but does it deliver any real chance for a reward for the cost it’ll entail.
as I understand it, the oceanfloor is some 3000 meters down. an a/c coming down from 10km, impacting (either in one piece or no) leaves a lot of debri (I can imagine) – differing densities and oceancurrents wil combine to make the search volume enormous…
I don’t think she posed the question with relation to the tanker competiton. It was just a question related to the 3 major incidents involving Airbus aircraft in the last year (the A320 was brought down by geese, a 737 would have also gone down in the same situation). I believe (hope) ikkeman is correct in assuming that the Air Force (Pentagon?, the Secretary of Defence?) will not take these accidents out of proportion.
Senator Inouye has just come out against the split buy. This just might kill that idea.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=anbkkNFAdchs