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by notahacker 2729 days ago
Aviation has moved on a bit since Boeing was founded over 100 years ago, and their client base is looking for any potential vendor to be the precise opposite of "scrappy". To put things into perspective, nearly all airlines outside Russia and China find proven, modern, thoroughly-tested and performant airframes from state-funded Russian and Chinese conglomerates with very attractive pricing and financing a bit too "scrappy" in terms of the available ongoing support for operations to even consider. A new entrant is going to need to spend $20bn+ to get a single aircraft ready, and they they're going to need to sell a couple of hundred to get close to breaking even. A brilliant outcome would be a gulf state liking the novelty of the concept enough to say "we'll take 50" and even that didn't translate to many further sales for the A380
2 comments
nostrademons 2729 days ago
They've got LOIs for 76 aircraft @ $200M/plane from 5 airlines:

https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/analysis-jal-inve...

There's certainly both technical & market risk, because an LOI != cash in the bank. But that's why investors are willing to invest. If Boom delivers on its technical promises to spec, that $15.2B in revenue lined up before the first prototype flies.

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notahacker 2729 days ago
It's not $15B lined up before the first prototype flies, it's $15B that might happen, eventually, after Boom has delivered on its technical promises by flying and certifying the airframe, if the airlines at that stage decide the finished article fits with their operations at that time, they're happy with the operational risk and they can raise the capital to finance the aircraft acquisitions on adequate terms.

JAL putting in $10m of seed investment is showing a bit of faith, but the rest is just pieces of paper.

Concorde had firmer commitments for 74 aircraft back in the day, but only ever made 20, most of which were sold off at a subsidised price and spent most of their time on the ground.

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jpatokal 2729 days ago
On the other hand, next time you find yourself in a regional jet in the US, odds are pretty high it was built by a scrappy manufacturer of Brazilian bush taxis, namely Embraer. So it's not impossible to break the Boeing/Airbus duopoly if you have a suitable niche (regional jets, hypersonic aircraft) just very hard.
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