Are you as well?

Reading the press releases/websites from Airbus and Boeing, it seems that both claim victory in the launch aid kerfuffle used by Airbus. The June 30 ruling

So, wisely sidestepping a position, we asked our readers what they thought about it and here are their various perspectives in ascending order of verbosity:

1.” I read the A380 WTO report and it clearly stated the launch loans were in violation of WTO rules on export subsidies. This is just corporate posturing.” (Anonymity requested)

2. “The WTO doesn’t have any ability to impose any penalties. Airbus was planning to trade the A380 for B787 and call it even. They are afraid they will get totally zeroed out of the tanker program.” (Anonymity requested)

3. “I have no real comment. As far as I can tell, both companies have received funding one way or the other, so the net effect is probably a level playing field (between Boeing and Airbus). By the way, agree or no, that guy (Tom Enders) is some wordsmith. He got every single point across in a hard hitting way, in just a few sentences. “…and the winner is………….” Certainly not Airbus or Boeing if they keep this up. Can I buy shares in COMAC yet??” (Anonymity requested)

4. “How does that saying go, “the kettle calling the pot black”. The (Enders) statement, “Since these cases were filed, the world has changed. In aviation, the previous duopoly marketplace is increasingly being populated by government-sponsored players, leaving Boeing and Airbus” seems to acknowledge that Airbus is also guilty of government subsidies. I find the statement very confusing other than Airbus would like Boeing to fess up on receiving gov’t subsidies to exonerate Airbus’s receipt of gov’t subsidies for A350, etc.” (Anonymity requested)

5. “As I have written in the 15 July WIN, it is very interesting that both Airbus and Boeing declared themselves the winner in the WTO decision regarding the launch aid provided to Airbus by European governments. While Airbus contends that 70 percent of the US claims were dismissed by the WTO and are characterized by Airbus as “wild accusations,” the most important factor for Airbus is that the billions of dollars in subsidies that they have received have been declared illegal and they can no longer count on such subsidies. That’s certainly a game-changer. But while Boeing was effusive in declaring themselves the victor, the pending case against them could very well have a similar outcome. The European Union says that the overall impact won’t be known until the outcomes of both cases are made public and looked at in balance. The probability is that these outcomes will not be good news to either company. – Michael Childers, LightStream Communications”

6. I believe that the threat to Boeing and Airbus will not be from each other, but from other ‘start-ups’ who’s local governments will assist them in ways similar to when both Airbus and (in particular) Boeing started.
I point to COMAC and the new C919 effort, which while a A320 copy, will pave the way for the launch of a Chinese Widebody A/C. Launched with Chinese Government backed funding, which has quickly been transformed into a ‘private’ enterprise. Funny thing, however, didn’t I read somewhere where COMAC ‘sold’ a number of these planes to some obscure airline in the middle of Manchuria? Smacks of Boeing launching a passenger airline in the 30′s, which the US Government eventually forced Boeing to spin off as United Airlines.

I note IRKUT MS-21, promoted by the Russians, which is also using an A320/B737 copy as a launch for more ambitious and bigger planes. Even the Japanese are promoting the MRJ, Mitsubishi Regional Jet. The WTO will have its hands full if Airbus and Boeing start filing lawsuits against each of those companies crying the same song about governmental funding and subsidies. [And we shouldn't forget Bombardier and Embraer, either.]

So what does that mean for Airbus and Boeing? Could be that they will have to be more selective in their development of new planes. Maybe they will abandon the entry level type planes and focus more on long range craft with advanced systems? or they may offer more ‘integrated’ solutions that the ‘start-ups’ cannot: packing not only the plane sales but taking one the extended maintenance of airframes and offering better customer support and service. CAS could expand, for example. And what of the FAA and EASA? Maybe Airbus and Boeing will lobby those regulatory agencies in an effort to slow down the competition during their own certification efforts with their regional authorities. Means a lot of new bi-lateral talks perhaps, which could turn adversarial. (Anonymity requested)

Lastly, here is another press release on the WTO subject from Airbus.

Enough said!

A Clarification:

Last week we covered TriaGnoSys’s VoCeM, which is a software voice compression approach for satcom communication. The VoCeM folks have tested compression on the order of 5X to 10X. Whoa, noted Symonty Gresham of symonTek. After a fusillade of emails with he and Axel Jahn of TriaGnoSys we report an update here:
Symonty noted: “The only way to compress say, mp4 (video such as youtube ) or jpg ( images ) would be to re-compress which is a lossy process ( data is lost ), this is generally called “on the fly compression” and was very big in the late 90′s and is available for all proxy cache servers such as squid for the last 10 years (these proxies such as squid or apache or free GNU projects). It is generally rejected now due to the resulting loss of quality and high CPU overhead to allow for fast links, but the modules are well known and around today. I demonstrated this technology first in 2000 for a Tenzing project. We are considering this for several symonTek projects using SBB, although it has limited success as time has moved on and new compression standards are being built in to the browsers and email systems.”

Axel wrote: “Just to make the article “crystal clear” (excuse me for this pun), I suggest to change the article in 3 words:
1) VoCem from TriaGnoSys – A series of software optimizations that are really multiple compression algorithms for satcom voice communication
2) such that they can approach ISDN speeds and still retain, and in some cases improve, voice quality