Can *just anyone* design and build an airliner nowadays?
Thread Starter
Can *just anyone* design and build an airliner nowadays?
We have Boom building a supersonic airliner. https://boomsupersonic.com/
There is JetZero with a 767-sized blended wing airliner. https://www.jetzero.aero/
Add Radia, making the world's largest aircraft https://radia.com/windrunner
And any number of new companies building electric-powered air taxis.
All due to enter service before very long.
Meanwhile Boeing have an X-66 https://boeing.mediaroom.com/2023-08...A-Modification and Airbus don't seem to be going beyond wind-tunnel experiments
There is JetZero with a 767-sized blended wing airliner. https://www.jetzero.aero/
Add Radia, making the world's largest aircraft https://radia.com/windrunner
And any number of new companies building electric-powered air taxis.
All due to enter service before very long.
Meanwhile Boeing have an X-66 https://boeing.mediaroom.com/2023-08...A-Modification and Airbus don't seem to be going beyond wind-tunnel experiments
Designing and building are two quite different processes, which also need to be combined with selling the product. Think of how many paper designs there have been over the years, or of supposedly good designs that were built in very small numbers.
All the other steps are hard - really hard.
Raising the necessary capital (10's of billions of dollars)
Engineering the thing with all the issues that entails, building and flying prototypes.
Demonstrating it meets the design requirements, testing it (including destructive testing for structural soundness) - and all the other stuff needed to get the thing certified.
Figuring out how much you need to sell it for to make it economically feasible (selling airliners at a loss is not a sustainable business plan).
Convincing customers to buy the thing - at a price that is more than what it's going to cost.
Developing a worldwide support network to keep the things flying.
Raise billions more when all that stuff goes over budget.
Bombardier tried to do that with the C-Series. For all intensive purposes it put them out of the commercial airliner business and they had to give the program to Airbus.
Lockheed tried to do that with the L1011 Tristar. It put them (and Rolls Royce) into bankruptcy, requiring sizable government bailouts and put Lockheed out of the commercial aircraft business.
Sukhoi tried with the Superjet 100 - they've so far lost a fortune and managed to deliver barely 200 of them over 15 years since cert (barely over 1/month - way less than breakeven)
Get the idea?
Thread Starter
exactly so, yet there appear to be people investing large fortunes, presumably in the hope of getting an even larger fortune back. There's no sign of anyone wanting to start small and build up over the course of decades, like Embraer.
I'm just wondering if advances in technology mean it's suddenly feasible for beginners to push bounds of aviation.
I'm just wondering if advances in technology mean it's suddenly feasible for beginners to push bounds of aviation.
Boeing managed to build and certify the 747SP and make some money only producing 45 of them. Now day's you'd need to produce at least 100 to just break even on the non-recurring costs of design and cert.
Interesting that in the discussions of Boeing in free fall, estimates for a new airliner from Airbus or Boeing are at USD 20-30 Billion and 6-10 years
Even updating a Business jet has cost Dassault almost a billion
Even updating a Business jet has cost Dassault almost a billion
