Carl is advocating a boycott on Boeing products by U.S. airlines because they sell those same airplanes to foreign competitors and sometimes they are financed with Ex Im financing.

Let's just take a look at the ridiculousness of that line of thought. Yes, I do fly for Emirates but I am also an American and I believe that Boeing is one of the last remaining manufacturing companies that made America great. Any move to hurt them financially by Americans must be looked at closely.

The U.S. import/export gap has a profound effect on every American. Boeing makes up a huge dollar amount of U.S. exports. A negative trade balance adversely affects the value of the U.S. dollar. Any move to further erode the trade balance will also further erode the value of the U.S. Dollar.

Okay now for some of the assertions in the ALPA white paper. Anyone ever read the book, " How to Lie with Statistics"? The white paper is guilty of that in this statement, paraphrased. Since the beginning of Open Skies negotiations ( 1992 ) the U.S. share of the International Widebody Fleet has decreased from 45% to 17 and is forecast to drop to 5% by 2025. Sounds ominous doesn't it? All those widebody jobs lost to foreign competition. Anyone want to bet the U.S. majors have more widebody airliners in their fleet now than in 1992? Those percentages that ALPA chose to use do not take into account the incredible growth in air travel since 1992, especially in foreign countries. In China, for example, there were only a little over 400 commercial aircraft as late as 1996. Today there are over 2000, including a substantial increase in widebody airliners, that amazingly are not all used on services to the USA.

Since I do know Emirates fairly well lets look at the ALPA argument closer in respect to them. Emirates operates to 7 U.S. cities, soon to be 8. Those would all be considered Ultra Long Haul routes which require 2.5 aircraft per city pair per frequency. So that means if they were all served by Boeing aircraft and including the double daily to JFK the total requirement would be 22.5 aircraft. Ah, but JFK is served by the A380 and LAX goes to the A380 on December 2nd. So, even after Boston is added the total number of Boeing 777s required for Emirate's services to the USA is 15 aircraft. That is out of a fleet of 130+ B777s.

So just to get this straight. There are some here who advocate penalizing a great U.S. manufacturer; all their employees; and the employees in the USA of all of their supply chain affiliates just because a foreign competitor is using a little more than 10% of the planes they buy from them to serve the USA.

I just want to make sure that is correct, because I am having a difficult time getting my mind around the concept and how this benefits America or the airline pilots of the USA.


Typhoonpilot