AHC: Boeing doesn't dominate Passenger aircraft market

kernals12

Banned
In the 1950s, America had a lot of excess aircraft manufacturing capacity leftover from the war. This meant a large number of aircraft companies playing a game of musical chairs for the then small market for civilian air travel. Lockheed, Convair, Douglas, Martin all had offerings. But Lockheed, Convair, and McDonnell all flopped and wound up focusing on military aviation. Douglas (which merged with McDonnell in 1967) and Boeing became the 2 major manufacturers of passenger airliners in the United States. And in 1997, Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas, becoming the only American manufacturer of passenger airliners, and along with Airbus of France, it has a duopoly on the world's passenger airliner industry.

So, how can we get someone else to be the big US airliner manufacturer?
 
Get the airforce to spilt the C135/KC135 buy between Boeing and Convair or McDonnell. This would allow the other company to pick up government work and build in some economies of scale into their commercial programmes.
 

kernals12

Banned
One thing that should be made clear is that if Boeing doesn't grow as big as it did IOTL, it has big repurcussions on Seattle. In 1970, as Boeing dealt with the costs of the 747 development and the drying up of Federal contracts as the US pulled out of Vietnam and the apollo mission was wound back, it laid off tens of thousands of workers. So many people left Seattle that a pair of real estate agents put up this billboard
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If Boeing doesn't come to dominate, it probably would put Seattle into a depression, but it would greatly cut the rate of increase.
 
That sign was when the sst was killed. Boeing lost a ton of money. The 747 was done by skeleton crew
 

MatthewB

Banned
And in 1997, Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas, becoming the only American manufacturer of passenger airliners.....So, how can we get someone else to be the big US airliner manufacturer?
Easy, have Mcdonald Douglas buy Boeing instead of the other way round.
 
And engines that don’t fall off.
Still not enough. The DC-10 had a bruising competition with the L-1011 that would have ended up in Douglas having trouble even if their aircraft had been perfect. If Lockheed doesn't decide to try to stick their oar in again, perhaps...

But really, this is much bigger than Boeing. Consolidation was the name of the game in aerospace for decades, so all avoiding Boeing being the dominant US company does is make some other company--probably Douglas, but you could perhaps arrange for someone else--the dominant firm, unless you really start messing with the timeline. There's not really much of a difference between our world and one in which McDonnell Douglas competes with Airbus for sales...
 
Boeing's dominance was a long time coming. Weren't they running the only private air tunnel in the 1930s or something similar? They were doing a lot of things right which paid off as aircraft design became more and more technical and less try something and see if it crashes. The growing expense of aircraft means means consolidation is inevitable. It is just a question of who is on top.
 
DC 10 wasnt a bad aircraft. The crash in Chicago was caused by airline not doing engine replacement correctly. Also the airline didnt take the option for stick shaker for both pilots.
The cargo doors were not DC10 specific. I think a couple of cargo doors failed on 747s
 
Actually Douglas and Lockheed were dominant in the piston airliner era in the 50s. Boeing basically bet the company on a radical new design the '367-80' which became both the 707 and the 717 (KC-135) (they are different airplanes). Boeing saw the coming downturn in the large military aircraft market coming as the strategic forces were modernized and used the data they had to invest in a commercial jet aircraft that could compete economically with the current prop airliners. The 'stunt' pulled at the -80s introduction of doing a 1G barrel roll in front of a large public audience drew rebukes from management and raves from the media and public helped bring attention to the new plane (Being a very good 1G roll the people inside the plane only knew they were doing a roll by looking outside)

The Douglas -McDonnell 'merger' was arranged by the U.S. Government because Douglas was dieing. The same thing with the McDD takeover by Boeing when McAir management had problems.
So have the Douglas, Lockheed, and/or Convair management see the future market better instead of being willing to continue to tweak the prop designs and they may have beaten Boeing
 
Make a DC=10 with cargo doors that shut.
And engines that don’t fall off.
DC 10 wasnt a bad aircraft. The crash in Chicago was caused by airline not doing engine replacement correctly. Also the airline didnt take the option for stick shaker for both pilots.
The cargo doors were not DC10 specific. I think a couple of cargo doors failed on 747s
With the doors, I understand it wasn’t easy to tell if the damn thing had closed properly or not. McDonnell-Douglas retroactively added a peephole so you could look at the locking mechanism.

The crash in Chicago occurred on May 25, 1979, in which 273 persons lost their lives including two on the ground.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ch...-crash-flashback-0525-20140525-story,amp.html
It is the worst aviation accident in U.S. history, and its 40th anniversary has come and gone, with nay a peep.

It was American Airlines using a new maintenance procedure of using a forklift to re-attach an engine after servicing. It caused cracks to the mount (and apparently, non-obvious cracks; they could have really used an employee who was a little bit paranoid; the FAA should have frankly been a lot slower on signing off on sloppy procedure)
 
Have Convair continue making feeder-liners ...... displacing all the feeder-liners now built in Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Sweden, etc.
 
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