airbus vs boeing who really builds planes?
boeing has clearly made the decision to be an aircraft assemble company rather than an aircraft manufacture.Does airbus make the parts to their aircraft or do they also sub out major part to there aircraft. airbus delivered there new jumbo Passenger plane in about a third of the time the new 787 has taken and boeing has stile not even flown the plane yet. Boeing is a long way from where they once where when they built the first 747.
Both companies subcontract many parts of aircraft, for political and economic reasons. Airbus did it earlier, since it’s mainly a political agency, anyway, and had that as one of its goals. Boeing has begun to do it more and more both to save money and to help persuade important markets to buy their airplanes (making something in China makes sales in China more likely, for example).
I don’t think this kind of distribution of the manufacturing task is a good idea for either company, from a safety and reliability standpoint, but safety and reliability are not always the main priorities for large corporations. Boeing has a profit motive to worry about (subcontracting may lower cost or persuade customers, as already mentioned), and Airbus has an unavoidable political agenda that must be respected (if an important politician wants some piece of an Airbus to be manufactured in some isolated town, it will be done, even if it has a negative effect on safety or the financial status of the company).
Boeing 747 vs Airbus a380
