Heh, see my other post about bitumen products, the government definitely fucked up there by being about as hands on as you can get

Not the same fuel pump provider, the same payment processor.

Which when you consider how fucking tiny NZs population really is, its not surprising that theres only a handful of providers in the first place - that one of the specialises in fuel station services is not surprising.

Z Energy is also a major wholesale importer for other fuel outlets as well.

But theres a lot of retail competition here - where I live, a modest town of 22,000 people, there are 2 Z fuel stations, 2 BP fuel stations, 1 Challenge fuel station, 1 Mobil fuel station and a Waitomo fuel station.

Travel 20 minutes up the road to the nearest city, and you can find 50 fuel stations covering a population of 185,000, of which only 8 are Z Energy fuel stations.

Normally Id agree with you, but NZ governments arent great with regulation.

We are a country of 6 million trying to act like a country of 25 million, so we want nice things while not having the import market of the size to be as cheap as elsewhere.

For example, until recently, there was one supplier of bitumen products covering 70% of the NZ market, and all bitumen is imported here. The NZ transport agency didnt like having to pay a foreign company rates higher than other countries so it had legislation passed to make the transport agency the sole supplier and required importers to sell to it at a fixed price, much below the then current market rate.

The 70% holder of the market basically overnight went “yeah, fuck no, bye” and pulled out of the market rather than sell to the government at something at or below cost. It stopped importing the product entirely.

So now theres a massive shortage of basic roadbuilding materials, and no new companies filling the hole because why the fuck would they?

People always bring up AF447, but rarely realise that the same situation happens on Boeing aircraft as well.

AF011, operated by a 777, suffered exactly the same “pilots entering opposing control motions” during landing and go-around, without each realising the other was doing anything.

Why?

Because even on Boeings, that “control columns are linked” is not permanent and can be broken with less force than you think - its designed to do so in case one jams. So you can easily end up in the same situation.

This is the guy that faked “proof” to the BBC almost a decade ago, and then cried off when called on it saying the pressure of publicity was getting to him.

This is the guy who claimed that he couldnt access a wallet with “proof” because someone else was holding part or all of a key and it was going to be mailed to him “any day now”. Did it ever turn up? No.

This is the guy that should be able to prove this in a moment any one of a dozen was, but has yet to do anything other than hand wave or fake shit.

So no, he cant prove it in court.

I've worked tangentially to some of these sort of critical installation processes, and in all cases Ive been exposed to, the job uses "installation packages" for all consumables.

In other words, your task is "install door plug", you go grab the package for that task - that package comes with all the nuts, bolts, wires and other things involved in that specific single job. Sometimes even tools. You start with the right amount of items, and by the end of it you should be left with a defined quantity of specific things - and its all laid out in a tray. You sign the tray out, and you sign it back in.

If the task goes over a shift change, then theres a process for transferring the tray and its contents.

I know that this process is used in some aspects of aircraft manufacture, so if its being used here then it should be obvious to whomever is taking over that the job is incomplete - and an audit of the trays at the end of the day or completion of the airframe should show if the tray is missing or has additional items.

So the only way in which this can really screw up is through deliberate action.

Congratulations, you have absolutely no comprehension of what is actually going on.

The post I am responding to is not about whether Boeing can deliver a dangerous aircraft or not, its about whether they retire the 737 design. Thats an entirely separate discussion to whether they deliver a dangerous aircraft or not.

The current 737 design isn't inherently dangerous. It can be modernised safely - but it was decisions within Boeing that made the modernisation they decided to do unsafe.

But if Boeing was to retire the 737 design, whether that be in 2011 when they decided to go with the MAX, or whether that be today, it would have serious implications for the market - stating that is neither ignorant nor malicious, its the basic facts. And ignoring those facts is ignorant.

MCAS as a concept is not inherently flawed - its basically flight envelope protection, and has been around in the Airbus product since the advent of the A320 in the 1980s. Boeing introduced it with the 777 in 1997, and its since flown on the military versions of the 737 and 767.

MCAS as Boeing decided to implement it for the MAX *is* flawed.

Could Boeing have done a safe version of MCAS for the MAX? Yes.

Would it have cost Boeing any more to do MCAS safely? Marginally yes, but not significantly.

If they had, we wouldn't be talking about the 737 being unsafe.

Could they have taken better approaches with a clean sheet design? Yes.

Would they have taken better approaches with a clean sheet design? Who knows. Boeing has had enough problems with its other recent product developments that this isn't an question that can be reasonably answered...

Now, heres the $20Billion question that absolutely blows your argument out of the water - what makes *you* think that Boeing in its current state would produce a safe 737-replacement?

At the end of the day, it would be the same engineers, the same management, the same board, the same CEO who decided to take the short cuts on the MAX - those same people who have contributed to problems with the 777X, with the KC-46, with the 787, with the MAX-10, with Starliner...

What seriously makes you think that a clean sheet design would not have come with similar problems?

What seriously makes you think that we wouldn't today be talking about a 797 crash? About the only thing that we can say would definitely be different would be that Boeing would probably have about 10% of the narrowbody market by sales rather than 40% - for the reasons I stated in my original post. If you understood it.

So, to sign off, I will just add a "fuck you" to you, for blatantly not understanding what is actually being discussed.

Quite a few of those third party shops also build parts for Airbus aircraft...

As EVs become more and more prevalent over the next 10 years, what happens to the people who live in situations with no off-street parking?

I've always seen that just hand waved away, without an actual solution proposed. It has to be solved, somehow, but no one seems to be interested in solving it. Are we just hoping fast charging becomes viable to the point where its like stopping for gas today?

The Sonic Cruiser was never progressed to a launch, but they did build several test CFRP fuselage barrels to test the concept out, and subjected them to a lot of tests.

And the 777 includes a lot of composites, it just doesnt have a composite fuselage or wing.

So both of those projects brought a lot of composite experience to Boeing before the 787 project.

Add to that some of the research done for the 747-500 project which I forgot to mention

Boeing has received subsidies and targeted tax cuts as well, and in fact during the last round of WTO disputes, the WTO ruled that Boeing received more subsidies than Airbus, so

Plus what people dont mention when they talk about Airbuses subsidies from its member nations is that accompanying those subsidies is a requirement to pay royalties for each aircraft delivered - and that continues to this very day, each sale of an A321NEO means a payment to the UK, French, German and Italian governments. They are massively in profit from that original investment 35 years ago.

Meh.

Despite the 787s success, hubs arent decreasing and the size of widebodies being purchased is increasing - for example, the 787-10 is a huge seller, the 777X is larger than the 777, the A350XWB is larger than both the A330 and 787.

The issue is a lot more complicated than hub-vs-spoke.

Ironically, Southwest was a main reason Boeing went with MCAS on the MAX, to avoid the issue of a sub-fleet of aircraft which brings all the issues of scheduling pilots etc

They are ceding a portion of a narrowbody market which is the largest its ever been, and a 60/40 split is great and probably wont get any worse.

Airbus isnt really going to increase production significantly- they cant afford to, because it means a massive investment into capacity which would have to be left idle when a downturn hits - and we have already seen two massive downturns in the past decade. If anything, expect an increase of 5 planes per month, but not 25. And even 25 isnt going to put a huge dent in a backlog of 6000 aircraft