[romanovcode]

This is just ridiculous. Boeing CEO wants bailouts, this is why he released the statement.

Without Boeing other companies will emerge. There is no way in this day and age (globalization) tourism/traveling will cease to exist.

[DrScientist]

I would agree unlikely, but if the virus continues to be a problem, or others emerge then tourism as we know it could come to an end.

Once you have a drop in traffic, the remaining traffic could become more expensive to operate, further reducing demand, making air travel rare rather than everyday again.

It's only cheap now because of the number of people travelling it's a virtuous spiral up, but there is also a sister spiral you can travel down.

[tobylane]

That kind of happened to supersonic travel. We don’t have Concorde any more but we still know how to make them, and there’s a lot of development into unmanned supersonic flight. Now I have a hankering to go to an airplane museum.

[9nGQluzmnq3M]

Supersonic travel in the Concorde era was never profitable due to expensive aircraft, insane fuel consumption, and sonic booms limiting possible routes. (Yes, BA/AF eventually figured out how to making operating them profitable simply by charging through the nose, but not at sufficient scale to build more planes, much less improve them.)

There are various startups like Boom who think a new generation of supersonics could be a profitable niche, but they were a long shot at best of times and much more so in these times. https://boomsupersonic.com/

[9nGQluzmnq3M]

Both planes & fuel are dirt cheap right now. As long as there's demand for travel (which is the real blocker right now), supply will spring up to fill it.

[lidHanteyk]

Which other companies, though? As of last year, Boeing and Airbus were 99% of the passenger plane market and 90% of the entire plane market [0]. Airbus is currently reeling from not just COVID-19 [1][3], but also a bribery scandal [2], and is in largely the same position as Boeing: Too big to fail, but nonetheless teetering on the edge.

The analogy with the Bronze Age is very neat. The two writing systems which ruled in the Mediterranean were Egyptian hieroglyphs and Sumerian/Babylonian cuneiform. Both were slow to use, difficult to spell, and non-phonetic. In contrast, the Phoenician-inspired scripts which popped up a few hundred years later were all phonetic, allowing people to more easily adopt them, and leading to Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.

I'm not saying that planes will vanish. I'm suggesting, rather, that there may be a dramatic reduction, on the order of 99% or more, in the amount of air travel, and that this reduction may last for over a generation. During that time, we may see entirely new, less centralized techniques for achieving air travel, which could not possibly have happened as long as Boeing and Airbus are still dominant.

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/25/why-the-airbus-boeing-compan...

[1] https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-airbus/...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-airbus-probe-idUSKBN1ZX2M...

[3] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/coronavirus-crisis-pushes-air...

[eru]

I'd be willing to give you pretty strong odds, if you were willing to bet on your 99%+ reduction forecast.

[lidHanteyk]

Bet what, exactly? I already wagered and lost karma, and I'm wagering more just by replying to you.

Air travel around the Pacific Rim is down by about half a nine to 1 nine [0]. Worldwide, airlines are taking beatings of about half a nine [1], which isn't that much, one would think, but airlines famously have supposedly tight margins of about 1% [2][3], and so even a minor system shock is impactful.

Sure, 99% reduction, 2 nines, is a bold statement. I'm merely imagining what would happen if both Boeing and Airbus went under. Without their facilities and engineering knowledge, it could take decades for a competitor to ramp up. Airbus themselves took decades to ramp up against Boeing, and they were purposely assembled for that task [6].

Most Boeings in the air are a little dated in terms of design, which has led to scandals (read: "crashes and loss of life") in the past few years. Specifically, the 737s and 747s account for 77% what Boeing's got in the air [4]. Similar numbers for Airbus, with again 77% of those planes being the A320s [5]. That's a lot of planes that rely on the duopoly for not just continued production, but also maintenance; aircraft are continuously costly and require expertise and care.

[0] https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/21027.jpeg

[1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/2020/04/charts-sho... Apologies, but JS will be required to render the graphs. Ugh.

[2] https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2014/02/23/...

[3] https://i.insider.com/4fdb8a20ecad04051f000016

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Commercial_Airplanes#Ai...

[5] https://www.statista.com/statistics/263394/airbus-aircraft-i... More JS, sorry again.

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Airbus

[kasey_junk]

The Boeing statement was about an airline going out of business not Boeing itself.

Boeing does want bailouts but for the airlines. The chances are basically none that the US allows Boeing to go away.

Airlines on the other hand go bankrupt all the time.

[jpeg_hero]

Pretty hilarious that OP goes straight into the collapse of civilization and Linear B after he TLDR’s

[redis_mlc]

> Boeing CEO wants bailouts

That, but without any strings to get in the way of, I don't know, stock buybacks?

[votepaunchy]

Buybacks are fine, just offer the bailout paid in stock and allow the company to repurchase later.