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Boeing Versus Airbus

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Boeing Versus Airbus

The Inside Story of the Greatest International Competition in Business

Knopf,

15 min read
10 take-aways
Text available

What's inside?

How Boeing and Airbus play the "the sporty game" of making competing commercial airplanes.

Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Innovative

Recommendation

John Newhouse, an experienced journalist and former New Yorker writer, has already written one book on the airplane industry (The Sporty Game). His fans will welcome the return of his expert insights, and may see this as a bonus supplement or extension. He has collected some fascinating new material for this work, so it is deeply informative, though perhaps not as dramatic as its title portends, since the titular competitors take turns winning. Newhouse clearly conducted extensive fresh research, and he presents interesting interview material throughout, although he gets a little awkward when he uses numerical data. getAbstract recommends this look behind the hangar doors of the airplane industry to business historians and, especially, to aviation buffs.

Summary

The Sporty Game

In January 2006, the senior executives of the Boeing Company decamped from freezing Chicago to warm up in sunny Orlando, Florida, for the company's annual executive retreat. But when Boeing's general counsel, Douglas Bain, walked to the rostrum to address the 260 assembled leaders, the climate in the room turned as chilly as a January wind off Lake Michigan.

"There are some in the prosecutors' office," Bain began, "who believe Boeing is rotten to the core." Bain then recited a litany of indictments against the company: violations of the Economic Espionage Act, the Procurement Integrity Act, the Major Frauds Act, the False Claims Act, problems which were compounded by charges of conflicts of interest, conspiracy and aiding-and-abetting. One senior Boeing exec, Bain noted, was already in federal prison. So was his public-sector counterpart who had cheated the government in exchange for a future Boeing job. The once proud company faced denial of export licenses, loss of security clearances and exclusion from all defense contracts. The business press pilloried it for executive-suite infighting and its "culture of excess."

Across the Atlantic, Boeing...

About the Author

John Newhouse covered foreign policy for The New Yorker. He was assistant director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and senior policy advisor for European affairs in the Clinton administration. This is his ninth book.

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    O. A. 6 years ago
    Glaringly, aviation industry is highly subsidised... with #Brexit and US-China trade war, would it be right to say.. the time has come for an Asian (Japan, China, S.Korea and India) airbus? Should this happen, what does developing economy stands to gain?
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    O. K. 6 years ago
    Very interesting to know about Airbus plane and companies