Why ISN’T Airbus Attacking Boeing!?

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Boeing has been having its fair share of troubles recently, so you would think that the competition would jump at the chance to take over their share of the market. Why hasn’t Airbus been going for the attack on Boeing?
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[MentourNow]

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[onenote]

Never interrupt your enemy while they are making a mistake.

[tjmcguire]

Perhaps you have heard the old joke... "There was a person flying over the Atlantic towards Canada. It was a 747. After a short time, engine 1 failed. The Captain came on and said: " I have to inform you that engine one has failed and so we will arive a bit late at our destination.". An hour later. Engine 2 failed. The Captain came back on. "I am sorry to inform you that we have had another engine failure and so our arrival has been put back 2 hours". 2 hours later.... Engine 3 failed. The Captain came back on and said; "I am sorry to inform you that we have lost engine 3 and our arrival time is now 6 hours from now." The passeneger looked to his buddy and said: "Heck, if we lose another engine we'll be up here all day."

[larsbartschi]

As far as I know, the slogan "4 engines, for long haul" came from Virgin Atlantic and Airbus had simply adopted it for this airshow. That's why a Virgin A346 landed in front of the advert.

[falcodante]

I always perceived the moto "If it's not Boeing, I'm not going" as safety related. Because, "I'm not going" is a relatively drastic Statement.

[SadisticSenpai]

Honestly, Airbus doesn't need to go after Boeing. All they need to do is keep quiet and let Boeing cook. Why take the bad PR or sour business relationships when you don't have to?

There's also the fact that some of their supply line overlaps with Boeing's - including Spirit Aerospace. So they want whatever's going on with Boeing and Spirit to go smoothly and negotiate either a good continuing contract for those parts or at least keep those parts coming while they find another manufacturer. Attacking Boeing doesn't serve either of those goals.

While they want more airplane sales (because ofc they do), there's also the fact of when they'd actually be able to deliver those airplanes. So they certainly don't want a massive flood of orders that they won't be able to fulfill for decades. The current situation works pretty well for Airbus - they have one major competitor and they don't have the resources/space to take over if that competitor fails.

[PassiveSmoking]

Wouldn't the old Boeing slogan "If it's not Boeing I'm not going" carry an implication that other aircraft aren't as safe as Boeing aircraft? It certainly has come back to haunt them in recent years, with plenty of people commenting on Boeing by reversing that slogan.

That's probably another reason why using safety as a selling point is a bad idea, if you have a bad spate of accidents your own claims of being safe can come back to bite you, especially if your product is found to be at fault.

[marko]

I think there is another aspect to not hammering Boeing into the ground. If Boeing goes under, it will only be a matter of time before Airbus trips over monopoly regulations. Like Microsoft helped save Apple when it was on the verge of bankruptcy, Airbus is better off not making waves for Boeing.

[zanmaru]

Video title makes a fair point. Airbus probably has a few Eurofighters lying around that could do the job.

[azuredragonofnether]

Airbus: Why should we? It's already done.

[jfmezei]

On Airbus vs Boeing: Increasing production isn't as simpe because you also need to get all parts suppliers and engine suppliers to also be able to increase production. Airbus saw what happened to Boeing pushing the limits and rightfully is more conservative increasing production. Notable is that Airbus has a very very large orders from basket-case airlines that ordered a gazillion aircraft and am pretty sure delivery slots can be negotiated for airlines such as United. Same with lessors.

[AndorMilesBoard]

The Airbus ad suggests a recent oceanic accident, even without the small text which basically confirms it. A surprising piece of negative advertising for a market that requires implicit trust. It was a very brave decision for Airbus marketing to continue this theme in later ads. Great video!

[LunnarisLP]

Well I think given the problems Airbus has to fullfill all of its current orders its kinda pointless to attack Boeing. They will need another 5-10 Years to even adapt their own production and get their supply fixed to increase production even to their level of demand. Things can backfire real fast if Airbus makes some stupid decisions as well.
Another reason would be that a monopoly wouldnt really benefit airbus all that much either because of laws that exist to prevent monopolies. So it might just backfire as well.

[BrySkye]

An important name not really mentioned here is John Leahy. Chief commercial officer at Airbus between 94 and 2017, having earlier been head of sales at Airbus North America since the 80's.
People might remember his marketing/PR style was often just generally very brash if not outright confrontational at times and given his role was to give Airbus a foothold, especially in North America, him and his approach can be somewhat compared to how Tom Kalinske ran Sega of America in the early-mid 90's, trying to break Nintendo's hold on that market (but with an ultimately more successful long-term result).
Some of his quotes certainly *implied* potential safety concerns, such as saying the 787 was "rushed" to market with unreliable and immature systems.
Having effectively achieving his targets and retiring by 2018, its not too unreasonable to say there has been at least a bit of a tone shift at Airbus since.

[brian]

You T-shirt has an early De Havilland Comet on it. I am nearly 80 years old and living in the Netherlands. My father was in charge of the ATC equipment at Heathrow Airprt (then called London airport) at the time when the Comet first entered service. At that time it was quite small, and had square windows et all. I used to watch them flying above our house on the approach to Heathrow. And then of course they started crashing.

[cturdo]

You don't have to trash your competition when the media will do it for you. That's a double-edged sword, but why bother when you can ride out the MAX troubles by being the default choice?

[deckard]

Why should Airbus do it? Boeing is doing great by itself...

[JelMain]

If you've got there but have been told your return flight has been cancelled, be glad you're not on the ISS.

[eddiehimself]

The absolute irony of those A340 adverts is that the longest scheduled route operated today (over 18 hours) is being operated by twin engined Airbus A350s.

[ethancampbell]

Before seeing the video, my guesses are :
1. Airbus has its own share of declining quality control issues, nothing as drastic but still, they'd rather avoid being too bullish and having it come back to haunt them.
2. Airbus doesn't have the production capacity to take over more market shares anyway.
3. Airbus doesn't want the US administration to feel they have to protect Boeing and take even more anti-competitive decisions in favour of Boeing.