Big Boeing order by an EU member

A growing budget carrier (Air Berlin) has just ordered 70 Boeing 737s. Isn't Germany part of the AirBus consortium? This is not an anti-EU, anti-Airbus post. Just an FYI for discussion and a question about Germany and Airbus.



70 Boeing 737s Ordered

[edit on 11/28/2006 by darkbluesky]

link fixed

[edit on 11/28/2006 by darkbluesky]

Could this be mostly due to the weakening dollar and strengthening Euro?

Originally posted by darkbluesky
A growing budget carrier (Air Berlin) has just ordered 70 Boeing 737s. Isn't Germany part of the AirBus consortium? This is not an anti-EU, anti-Airbus post. Just an FYI for discussion and a question about Germany and Airbus.



www.msnbc.msn.com..." target="_blank" class="postlink">70 Boeing 737s Ordered

[edit on 11/28/2006 by darkbluesky]

The link didn't work.


But "Germany" is not part of the Airbus consortium, EADS own airbus, EADS are a company.

Airbus is not a nationalised (public) company, its private.


European governments give favourable loan terms to Airbus to keep jobs within their countries, there is nothing to it beyond that.


Airlines can pick and chose whatever manufacturer they want, governments cannot really apply pressure - although I will freely admit that the predominant cars in Germany are VW/Audi/BMW and Mercedes and in France its Renault/Peugeot/Citroen, so national pride may make airlines lean towards 'their own countrymens' product.

A lot of European airline companies buy Boeing aircraft all the time, just like American airlines buy Airbus aircraft.

There's really nothing surprising here.

Originally posted by djohnsto77
A lot of European airline companies buy Boeing aircraft all the time, just like American airlines buy Airbus aircraft.

There's really nothing surprising here.

Absolutely - it's a commercial decision between competing corporate products; not an expression of national economic pride / jingoism

Originally posted by darkbluesky
A growing budget carrier (Air Berlin) has just ordered 70 Boeing 737s. Isn't Germany part of the AirBus consortium? This is not an anti-EU, anti-Airbus post. Just an FYI for discussion and a question about Germany and Airbus.

There is really an interesting story behind it. Actually, Air Berlin is an US american company founded in the 70s, because back then only aircraft operated by the four WW2 Allies were allowed to fly to the enclave Berlin. So even though they are managed mostly by Germans and seated in Germany nowadays, its not a true german company by heritage (including americanized business ethics...).

Secondly, the new 737-800 (60 according to their website, not 70) are directly related to their current fleet: They operate nearly exclusively variants of the 737, and variants of the A320. In 2004, they also ordered 60 new A320s with an option for another 40 planes. So basically all stays "in the family".

Bear in mind also that Air France, Lufthansa and British Airways all have large fleets of various Boeing types as have many US airlines bought large numbers of Airbus models, an order for 65 A320's was revealed by a US airline only two weeks ago. The Airllines like having two big suppliers to play off against each other, a monopoly of airliner production would be disastrous. Another example was Singapore Airlines revealing identical orers for both the 787 and the A350 within a few days of each other, when either type would have met their requirements on its own, and an all-787 fleet would be delivered much earlier.