Boeing Versus Airbus
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3.7 • 10 Ratings
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
The commercial airline industry is one of the most volatile, dog-eat-dog enterprises in the world, and in the late 1990s, Europe’s Airbus overtook America’s Boeing as the preeminent aircraft manufacturer. However, Airbus quickly succumbed to the same complacency it once challenged, and Boeing regained its precarious place on top. Now, after years of heated battle and mismanagement, both companies face the challenge of serving burgeoning Asian markets and stiff competition from China and Japan. Combining insider knowledge with vivid prose and insight, John Newhouse delivers a riveting story of these two titans of the sky and their struggles to stay in the air.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this update of his 1982 study of the aviation industry, The Sporty Game, Newhouse takes us inside the seesaw battle between the world's two remaining manufacturers of big airliners. "Mighty Boeing and the arriviste Airbus," both massive corporations and emblems of national pride, are worth exploring at length. Yet while the former New Yorker writer has invested a tremendous amount of effort in interviews and research, he fails to assemble his facts, quotes and informed judgments into a coherent story. Newhouse introduces a fleet of issues: international sensitivities, cost overruns, governance structure, missed deadlines, the U.S. airline crisis, purchase negotiations, engine mechanics, government subsidies, the economics of plane size, the composition of airplane wings. But his touch is too light. Strong personalities most prominently, Boeing's controversial CEOs flit in and out, never quite coming to life; the planes themselves fare no better despite pages of description. The thousands who work in the airplane and airline industries may enjoy the details; the rest of us even frequent fliers might not be as interested.
