Airbus A350 first flight a success, will Boeing apply for Chapter 11?

Yeah, but I'm already tailgating the guy in front of me, what else can I do to go any faster??? lol

Actually I'm just the opposite, I drive 60 on the highways regardless of the speed limit, moderated only by the conditions. Regardless of the speed limit I've always got people on my tail, some close, some trying to read the fine print on my bumper sticker. If they persist, I slow down a bit until they pass. I never tailgate anyone no matter how slow they are going.

That would be a bad deal. If you can't have at least two major competitors in a market you can't have real competition... or *any* competition. Then there is little pressure to hold down prices and all the profits go to that one company... I mean *all* the profits.

I can't imagine there isn't market enough for two. Both of these companies know how to manage profit and will get by with the share they end up with.

You can (almost) always use more smaller planes rather than a superjumbo- so the A380 is not without competition, just without serious competition in its class.

Boeing tried to sell a 747X but didn't get any orders.. so they officially threw in the towel and left the superjumbo market to Airbus.

The strategy of concentrating on smaller aircraft may pay off for them.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

It sure will because most passengers prefer flying point-to-point, instead of point to large hub and then to small destination hub.

Sure, that will allow airlines to charge a premium for the point-to-point and sell off any remaining seats cheap as parts of other routes to those who value money over saving a couple of hours.

So, you might find DFW->LAX is more expensive than YYZ->DFW->LAX, despite being a much shorter distance (and YYZ->LAX nonstop is more expensive again).

The long haul high-traffic routes (eg. LAX->TYO and ORD->HKG) will probably be dominated by the biggest planes that are economical to fly.

In the 80's this resulted in a weird phenomenon: DUS->ORD->SEA was more expensive than BUD->DUS->ORD->SEA. So ...

But because Budapest was behind the iron curtain that could result in some questions at the US port of entry. Until it was explained that the first leg is never flown. It must have resulted in lots of empty seats on flights out of BUD that they couldn't fill with enough standby passengers, which is environmentally not good. Eventually the airlines caught on to what folks were doing and shut that loophole.

Here in RI once you get through Providence if you try to do just 60 you take your own life in your hands.

I've found 70MPH seems to be the low end. 80MPH to 90MPH is more like it.

Yes indeed - they called them Redstone. And in fact the Redstone Arsennal still exists to this day.

IIRC the first American rocket, a development of the V2, was called the Aerobee. Early efforts to scale up the V2 fell foul of the square-cube law, where thrust goes like the volume but cooling goes as the surface area.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs