Saudi airline cancels $6B Boeing order in favor of Airbus

Foreign aircraft purchases are highly politicized and this decision probably has nothing to do with product quality, safety, or price. More likely it's a signal from the Saudi royal family to the US Congress that they ought to stop being so critical over minor issues like the murder of a US resident or bombing civilian targets in Yemen.

Boeing deserves to get pushback like this. They really let everyone down, but most problematic was not having public safety foremost in their design of this airframe. That is inexcusable.<p>It’s too bad there isn’t a better whistleblowing mechanism for these kinds of questionable design decisions for critical infrastructure.<p>I can only hope the certification process will become more rigorous and require the approval of multiple aviation regulators before it’s declared airworthy.

Airbus make a superior product anyway. They&#x27;ve gotten FbW down to a science and were the first to use it, as well as glass cockpits. The pilots generally like Airbus planes better. They have better safety controls, more room for the pilots, and more comfortable for pilots and passengers. Boeing seems almost last century in comparison.

It&#x27;s actually more of a pragmatic decision than it is one of safety for Flyadeal.<p>They were slated to take the 737MAX deliveries starting in 2021 and with deliveries currently halted, there is no way that will happen (especially if the airplane isn&#x27;t cleared soon). Flyadeal is trying to grow and they need planes to do it. Airbus can deliver on the 2021 date without issue and Flyadeal was likely given a slight discount to pick up some empty production slots.

It&#x27;s important to keep a good competition between Airbus and Boeing. I hope Boeing can get up and fix their crap. (And I&#x27;m European)

Events like this really put into focus the value of engineering. Imagine that management had hired an elite team of 50 safety focused individuals and paid them a billion dollars. They would still be profitable!<p>Totally reminds me of exploding Samsung phones in terms of the small incremental investment that would have saved billions.

Boeing&#x27;s MAX order backlog is 8 years long still.

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From how these contracts were explained to me, this is a win for Boeing (probably).<p>Most of these contracts have an initial deposit then payment on delivery however if the order is cancelled, Boeing keeps any deposit and possibly some or all of the full payment (as a cancellation fee like with most cell phone contracts).<p>Now Bowing already has the initial cost of manufacturing partially or fully covered AND gets to sell the plane or simply not manufacture it for pure profit.

In the early days of the 340 (one of the first commercial FBW aircraft) I held back for a couple of years but it&#x27;s turned out to be great.<p>Now I&#x27;m suspicious of all 737&#x2F;787 flights. Thank goodness it&#x27;s easy these days to figure out what kind of aircraft you&#x27;re booking.<p>I wonder when sites like Kayak will add a toggle so you can include&#x2F;exclude certain models of aircraft from your itinerary.

I can imagine airliners have their entire maintenance &quot;street&quot; completely tailored to maintain their Boeing aircraft, so unless you already happen to have Airbus, a switch is not likely it seems. Can anyone shed some light on that?

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Who here would fly on a Max 8? If not, why should Saudi buy them?

&quot;Saudi airline gives Boeing the chop&quot;

<i>this is the first instance of an airline publicly switching an aircraft order away from Boeing ... Airbus doesn’t have the production capacity to take much market share away from Boeing ... If this plane doesn’t start flying again before Christmas ...</i><p>It&#x27;s not likely Boeing is going out of business. Is the purpose of articles like this to effect a wall street trader? Not into that personally, just wondering. Why is NBC putting pressure on Boeing? For the clicks?