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Airlines Shouldn’t Always Listen to Their Customers

The financial results of European budget leader Ryanair suggest there is more bark than bite in complaints about unbundled air fares.  “Just raise my ticket price instead of loading me up with extra charges, and I’ll pay.” Evidence from the airline industry suggests this is something people say but don’t do.

The trend of “unbundling”—dividing a product up into different payable segments—has picked up pace again among carriers. It was pioneered by the likes of Southwest and European budget leader Ryanair, RYAAY +5.93% but full-service brands like Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and British Airways eventually followed suit with “basic economy” fares. Now, Lufthansa and Emirates—which focuses more than most on the luxury market—are testing the waters of unbundling in business class.

Excerpt from WSJ
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Major Boeing Supplier to Lay Off 2,800 Workers

Freeze on Boeing 737 MAX forces Spirit AeroSystems to cut back

The biggest Boeing Co. BA -0.76% 737 MAX supplier said it is planning an initial 2,800 layoffs, the first announced job cuts since the grounding of a plane that is rippling through the broader aerospace industry.

Spirit AeroSystems Holdings Inc. SPR -1.59% makes the fuselage and engine parts for the MAX and had been producing enough for 52 jets a month before Boeing said it would freeze assembling the planes in January for a “temporary” time.

As the largest U.S. manufacturing exporter and one of the nation’s top private employers, Chicago-based Boeing plays a big role across the industry and in the U.S. economy.

Production of the MAX, which was Boeing’s best-selling plane, supported thousands of jobs across a network of over 600 suppliers and hundreds of other smaller firms in the global MAX supply chain.

Excerpt from WSJ
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OPINION - Boeing Emails Explain Nothing

OPINION

Where were the acerbic, scathing employees when MCAS was designed?

A Boeing 737 MAX in Renton, Wash., Dec. 16, 2019. PHOTO: LINDSEY WASSON/REUTERS
The latest crop of Boeing emails is a torment to the company in its struggle to get the 737 MAX into the air, but a secret that should not be a secret is that all of corporate America, not just Boeing, lives these days by employing creative, freethinking people who spout off acerbically, critically and colorfully in electronic messages.

Think of the Sony emails leaked by presumed North Korean hackers. My own corporate overlords in the media business have lived in this world longer than most. When a General Mills executive was hired to cut costs at the Los Angeles Times in 1995, the newsroom immediately dubbed him the “cereal killer.” The executive was philosophical. After all, his new company employed too many sardonic, highly verbal people to expect anything else.

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Boeing Orders Fall to 16-Year Low

Aerospace giant’s deliveries also slump to 380 jets, the lowest since 2005

Boeing Co. said deliveries and new orders for its jetliners hit their lowest point in more than a decade as the global grounding of the 737 MAX undermined the aerospace giant’s business.

The U.S. plane maker in 2019 handed over 380 aircraft, including military versions of its jetliners, a 14-year-low that compares with a record 863 deliveries by European rival Airbus SE. Boeing delivered 806 planes in 2018, a high for the company.

The Chicago-based company last year brought in new orders for 246 commercial jets of all types, its lowest tally before cancellations and model swaps since 2003.

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