Here we go again.
Another Lambasting of BCA from an ME3 CEO.
STC has become quite good at this. Yes, he is leveraging his company, yes he doesn't have to and yes the ball is not on His side of the court. BCA is many things, but what they are not, are waiters at a restaurant. In fact, kudos to their PR department for keeping its cool. BCA has dealt with many CEO's and certainly this wont be the last. I also don't think being a jerk to any waiter makes your food arrive faster. STC is right though, the claims and guarantees given are backed with thinning levels of credibility. Indeed, the situation as presented now with the 779 is not rosy at all. The airplane is designed as the successor to the Queen of the Skies. And that design, that eclipsed it, has fell flat on its face. So the question is, what can be inferred to any design that is in this market segment? Is the order book for the 779 an indication of a long term market shift away from large jets?
Odds are, that the trends will continue and if this is the case we could be seeing not only the demise of the 747, but the market it created as well.
Markets appear and disappear all the time. What remains is the finger print of the market that was there. Horse drawn carriages disappeared along with steamers, Trams, ATARI sets etc etc. This however only created the need or desire for that technological solution, that it offered, but today those needs manifest themselves in different ways. Carriages were replaced by Trains, Trams with Subways, ATARI sets with smartphones and steamers with jetliners, of which the Queen was instrumental in bringing about its demise.
That such a technological shift is indeed possible whilst presenting a similar solution to the need of Mass Air travel is not in doubt. What is in doubt, is the continued presence of large jets to perform this social function.
You see The Queen of the Skies didn't just create a continuity of technology when it was introduced. It created its own market and its own rules. That machine made many things that were impossible, possible, but did so on the basis that it could not be matched, at least during its early years. The capability it delivered to the market worked for the 747, because the 747 was its OWN market. It was a monopoly.
Fast forward to today, and BCA is putting stock on the next generation of that market. I've said it before and I will say it again, I don't like the solution. It is a rehash of a rehash. Having said that of course, the monopoly I just mentioned didn't last forever, and what the 779 is today, is perhaps BCA's last foray into this market and if this is true, then it is expected that their heart really isn't in to it as much as it should. I don't blame them for putting out the 779 as the replacement for the 747. Its not like the 747 was doing so well, only that I wish they had paid more attention to it.
Even those customers that bought it are perhaps dinosaurs of a dying age. Air travel has been fragmenting for more than 2 decades, only now is the effects of which more accelerated than ever before. The main drivers are technology, and the increased efficiency. This saves money and helps airlines, head off inflation, but lowered costs mean smaller entrants into the market, with smaller fleets and lower overheads, making large operations difficult to justify and with more competitors to boot..
It may be a matter of time before the legacy Airlines of yesteryear are brought down to their knees by the ever increasing no. of competitors chipping away at its base, little by little until there is no longer any advantage to having them around. It may become inevitable. In fact, the technology to do that may already exist.
Fragmentation is and always has been its own dog, and no one believes that it has it own day, until, that is, they have seen theirs, with their own eyes.
