What might happen?

If governments stopped giving subsidies to Airbus ,Boeing and the two companys went bankrupt.
You can hardly build a 747 in your backyard.
Would lots of differnt companys contibute? example one company might make the seats.
Would the airlines assemble the planes themselvs?

Actually its Airbus with the subsadies. However, both companies are more like intergrators and farm out tons of the construction work. These companies make the part like say a wing or an apu or the flaps. Then items are shipped to Toulsane or Renton and are put togeher then sold as complete planes. I doubt that if both went bellly up, someone could come in and take over.

Originally posted by FredT
Actually its Airbus with the subsadies. However, both companies are more like intergrators and farm out tons of the construction work. These companies make the part like say a wing or an apu or the flaps. Then items are shipped to Toulsane or Renton and are put togeher then sold as complete planes. I doubt that if both went bellly up, someone could come in and take over.

That's very biased. Boeing would never have built its impressive range of jets without loans form the Us govt

Stop it FredT, you know as well as I do that Boeing is as complicit in this as Airbus. What with Tax subsidies for factories and only paying 1/4 of the price for Japanese components among other things, Boeing isnt exactly self funding either.

If Boeing and Airbus had government funding withdrawn, nothing would happen. Aircraft would get more expensive, thats it. The two companies would still receiving funding, but from banks, and probably at much the same rate as they currently do, but they would continue to develop and produce aircraft.

Besides, there are other aircraft manufacturers that would pick up the slack (Bombardier and others).

Ok people let's not get into the arguement over subsidies and tax breaks again...if you want to do that then do it somewhere no one cares about (like the rant section in BTS).

On the subject though, I think development of new airliners would be drastically cut and Airbus hit worse than Boeing. Boeing have a huge military section and space section to it where as Airbus is a bit of a noob in these areas (do they even do ANY space stuff?). Having said that though no government would allow these two major players to go under, if they did then there would be huge unemployment in regions and they would also lose all their current investment and just think of all the subcontractors that may go under or at least find it hard to cope given that their biggest customers have died on them!

Having said that if it were to happen the world may be a different place for the better. Contrary to what I said earlier destruction of the major players may allow for more conecptual designs to be seen through the bog standard AL tubes and radical progress could be made. Who knows, that's kind of why the future is so exciting, you never know what might happen

Oh and Fred you need a dictionary and an atlas ("Toulsane" ... Toulouse me thinks )

[edit on 31/1/05 by Infidellic]

The trouble is that fatre paying passengers, by and large, actually want dull metal tubes to fly in. The faimiliarity is comforting. There are much more efficient shapes for big transports but everyone is scared of alienating their potential customers. Learfan, Avtek, Omac and Beech tried to shake up the equally conservative business fleet scene in the 1980's with some very radical shapes but every one of them bit the dust.