Boeing

The Boeing Dreamliner 787 is a result of Boeing’s strategy to recapture the market Airbus took away from it. Airbus’ strategy of the yore was to build smaller, lighter and more economical commercial planes as opposed to Boeing’s ambitious undertakings of �bigger is better’. Now the strategies are reversed. While Airbus has caught on to the Boeing mania of gigantic planes, Boeing has embraced the Airbus strategy of building planes that are economical for the airlines. Both strategies are based on the vision of the future as seen by the two giants of the sky. Which strategy comes out the winner will become clear only after a couple of years. At present the Dreamliner 787 looks set to blow the competition away, if it hasn’t already. The Dreamliner 787 has already created aviation record of booking 677 orders worth $100 billion while a single plane hasn’t flown as yet. It’s no less than a miracle for Boeing which was struggling to profitably sell commercial airliners and this is their first new plane in 12 years. No doubt with all this hype, Boeing’s stock has climbed appreciably. But is the Dreamliner 787 worth the hype? The plane does not look futuristic or anything, so it’s the not first impressions. What has caught the fancy of the airline industry is that the plane is made almost completely with carbon composites, which makes it lighter and fuel efficient. In fact Boeing is claiming it saves 20% on fuel and is more environment-friendly. Size wise it is no match for the gigantic Airbus A380. While the Dreamliner 787 has anywhere between 210-330 seats depending upon the model, the Airbus A380 has a staggering capacity of 519 seats which can be upgraded to 800+. This 550 ton plane has got two full-fledged decks, double staircase, sleeping quarters for the crew and a host of other features. On the face of it, the Airbus A380 looks like a clear winner. However, production glitches and delays have marred the enthusiasm of the buyers which is clearly reflected in the less-than-impressive order figures for 2006; 824 against Boeing’s 1050, an all-time record for Boeing. The king of the sky for the larger part of the 20th century, Boeing began losing ground to Airbus at a frightening pace in the 1990s when it was happily engrossed in diluting its own brand by acquiring every business under the sun. It acquired Rockwell International, a major aerospace and defense company in 1996, McDonnell Douglas, a competitor in aircraft manufacturing in 1997, and Hughes Aircraft, a leading space and communications company in 2000. At the end of this whirlwind expansion spree, Boeing was making satellites, AWACS airplanes, unmanned surveillance aircraft, guided missiles and GPS equipped handheld radios. And yeah, it also initiated an interest in air traffic management. It was doing everything except focus on its core competency, the commercial airliner. Things came to a head when in 1999 Airbus for the first time sold more planes than Boeing. To be fair to the Boeing people, they had seen this coming a couple years before and had already started working on a new strategy of smaller and faster planes (close to the speed of sound) that could