6000PIC
the Europeans, Russians, Middle Easterners and Asians have taken over.
Quite right, DA50driver. All the OEMs have been selling something north of 60% of their planes outside of the US for the last 3 years. Sales in the US market have been difficult due to SARBOX, inflated prices, and long backlogs. Any company, forced to unload a jet in today's market, will take, at least, a 30%-40% price hit on the sale. As
C-P said, the taxpayers will foot the bill for canceling the deal, pay for company officers to sit in airline terminals unproductively and pay for the people put out of work at the company and at the OEM and its suppliers. Let's not forget the domestic content on these planes is about 50% US, even at Dassault. Pretty poor financial deal there!
C-P, evidently, Dassault is less aggressive on progress payments than some OEMs.
Now, is a good time to "move up" a delivery, if prepared to pay. Unfortunately, I know several guys out of work due to the layoffs at Citigroup. I guess unemployment of pilots, mechanics and everyone everywhere in the aviation community is not a concern for our government and its handmaidens, the media.
Having been in a number of Presidential airlift missions for Clinton and Bush and looking at the costs of Presidential travel, not to mention Ms. Pelosi's demands for Air Force travel via B757, it is a bit rich of them to complain about business use of jets. The estimate for Bill Clinton's trip to Australia was in the range of $100 million. The India trip must have exceeded that. I won't go into the costs of CODELs flying congressional junkets.
GF