So when is it gonna kill Google?

Agree with the sentiments of the sibling posts that monopolies seem as great for business as ever.

But sadly not fast enough. The monopolies get to make everyone else miserable for far too long.

There's a Chinese saying: "Wealth does not pass three generations". Three generations of Intel CEOs after Grove: Craig Barrett, Paul Otellini and Brian Krzanich (the progenitor of much of the mess that Intel is in today).

First you have rapid iteration and lots of innovation.

Then the projects become more complex, there's less quick wins, and cycles get longer.

Then it gets so bad you won't have anyone working anymore who has finished any new projects during their career, everybody's been working on the same decades long projects since time immemorial. Some new ones are started, some are cancelled every now and then but none are finished.

Then the organization will not even try anymore and accept to live in the ruins created by past generations.

Then it could happen that all artifacts crumble, all documentation disappears and even the people propagating the intergenerational verbal history forget or die and nobody will even know that anything existed.

Most of Boeing's Ls seem to have come from quality issues, and that seems to come downstream to cutting spending on engineering, testing and in general overall technical ecosystem.

There is no point in making 20 or even 200 new planes, if you don't make them well.

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.” - Steve Jobs

What’s wrong with the 737 design that it wouldn’t pass today as a new aircraft? (Ignoring the disaster that was the MAX.)

Not only that, but Boeing is actually limited in how much they can "modernize" the 737, because doing too much might exceed the limits of the 737's type certificate. This is the reason behind the current engine inlet overheating worries, which has led to an airworthiness directive for the 737 MAX (https://aerospacenews.com/faa-airworthiness-directive_boeing...) and is also one of the reasons for the delay certifying the MAX 7 and MAX 10. This would be a complete non-issue for other planes, because all modern designs have a switch position that only turns on the engine anti-ice system when it's needed, but the 737 MAX can't have that because the 1967 737 didn't.

(Was on a transatlantic one once. Never again.)

An issue like MCAS would be much less likely if the aircraft was designed to be fully fly-by-wire - but a fully fly-by-wire single-aisle would have to be recertified from scratch.

The problem with jetliner manufacturing is that you kind of have to bet the company on every single new model you release, just because the process of designing a new plane is so cumbersome and difficult that you can't really afford to be doing it very often.

But that RyanAir didn’t happen to have a version of the design that was extremely unsafe doesn’t mean that the family of planes is safer than the competition. It just means that it got lucky that it didn’t have the flawed planes.

That's probably the biggest reason for their safety record: the same plane means common maintenance, training and operations, giving much less risk.

(They do, however, use Dublin airport's worst 'gate', 335, which is _actually_ a bus to a small fake terminal separate from any of the main ones.)

It's likely this. Airbus has a backlog of ~7500 A32x orders right now, and produces about 75 a month, so if you order one today, you're looking at eight years.

Though also some budget airlines like the 737 because it's _short_; it's not as high off the ground as an A320, making access via airstairs more feasible.

Some MBA types might also see the opportunity to lay off experienced expensive Airbus pilots and hire new cheaper Boeing pilots, classic strategic gambling, not sure those things ever pay off.