Turbine D, Derg:
hey, you are both right !- there are basic problems somewhere within RR design and business but being an European i am a little biased towards trying to understand RR problems while not being British i do also understand that US has made flying a huge business not without merit. Certain competition is always good for us customers - for me it is good that Boeing has Airbus and GE+PW has RR to watch at. Problem starts when established leader looses the edge over its followers or the followers take shortcuts to try to overcome the leader.
But actually the biggest threat comes from what has been defined as 'innovate downwards' movement that has been started long time ago by certain Sam Walton and transferred into aviation by SouthWest Airlines later. So instead of 'citus-altus-fortus' we have 'everyday low prices'. And people got used to this: all of us! And this attitude has deep consequences - american car producers are just recovering, nike is not making any shoes in US, a new stealth plane was recently presented in China
Cheaper is fine as long as customers allow for lower quality because without profits there is no development and no quality. Just look how many more customers want to fly A380!
Unfortunately times of Apollo and Concorde are gone...