Things Boeing Can Only Dream About

Boeing’s Dreamliner landed at Berlin’s Schönefeld Airport on Sunday. A day earlier, it made its first visit at the Berlin Tegel Airport. Air Berlin’s CEO, Joachim Hunold, headed the welcoming committee. Hunold had just ordered 15 Boeing Dreamliners and had film actor and director Til Schweiger in tow. When Rainer Schwarz, spokesman for Berlin’s third-class airport, thanked Airbus for showing up, it sounded like mockery, because the damage to Boeing had already been done at the just-ended Paris Air Show at Le Bourget.

Boeing’s rival Airbus cleaned up in Paris. The EADS subsidiary booked a total of 730 orders worth $72.2 billion. They got 418 confirmed orders, far more than at the record 2007 show. Boeing, in contrast, came away with only 142 orders and commitments worth around $22 billion. What could not be disguised was the fact that the Dreamliner, still years behind its planned delivery date, remains just a dream despite all the advertising.

The high-flying EADS subsidiary will no doubt make CEO Thomas Enders very happy, since the CEO’s chair at parent company EADS will become vacant when current CEO Louis Gallois steps down. If, as expected, major shareholders Daimler and Lagardère depart, EADS will become number one, more independent and stronger than ever before. Then it will subjugate not only its competitors and suppliers, it will become mighty enough to put governments on a leash and plunder their tax coffers. Boeing has already demonstrated how that’s done.