Bombardier and Embraer are the little brothers to Airbus and Boeing. They admire and want to be like their older brothers, but seldom are. Many people talk about how Bombardier and Embraer can’t beat Airbus and Boeing, but here’s why…
Bombardier and Embraer can’t beat Airbus and Boeing because of their size. Bombardier is simply too small to compete with Airbus, and Embraer is simply too small to compete with Boeing.
Instead of competing directly, they choose to make smaller aircraft, which don’t compete with anything Airbus or Boeing make, and thus, Boeing and Airbus don’t have any reason to try to consolidate with them or try to force them into bankruptcy.
Often, Embraer and Boeing team up for joint ventures, such as the E-Jet family, the same can be said for Bombardier and Airbus, who did the A220 project together, until Bombardier recently sold their share in it.
Background
Embraer
Embraer was founded in 1969 in Brazil as an aircraft manufacturer for military, agricultural, private and commercial jets. It was initially under state control, however was moved to private control in December 1994. The Brazilian government was allotted a golden share in case of emergency.
Since then, the manufacturer has grown to become one of the largest manufacturers in the world and the largest aircraft manufacturer in South America.
In 2000, the company went public, with the Brazilian government retaining its golden share in the company.
Since then, the private jet part of the business flourished, the military aviation business flourished, so did the agricultural and commercial.
In 2018, Boeing bought a majority stake (80%) in the commercial aircraft division of Embraer (which also owns the private jet division), who have since gone on to focus on producing more efficient regional aircraft to outperform Bombardier.
The Boeing-Embraer joint venture has led to the development and release of the E-Jet family (including aircraft like the ERJ-145, E-175 and E-195). Embraer also decided to re-release these jets, instead this time, the aircraft would be more efficient and have a longer range.
This new re-released family of jets became known as the E-Jet family 2. This family includes aircraft like the ERJ-195-2.
Bombardier
Bombardier Aviation was founded as the aviation arm of the Bombardier company, a mass manufacturing Canadian company, in 1989.
The aviation manufacturer mainly focuses on producing short haul, regional airliners and executive business jets, however amphibious aircraft from the division’s acquired arms (such as Shorts Brothers and de Havilland Canada) are also produced.
Aircraft such as the Dash 8 Series 400, CRJ100/200/440, and CRJ700/900/1000 are among the company’s most famous and successful regional airliners.
These aircraft are in service with airlines across the world, from airBerlin (now defunct), Flybe (also now defunct) and American Eagle.
Bombardier also produces business aircraft such as the Global express and Challenger families of business jets. These business jets include the Global express 6500, Challenger 600 and Challenger 850, which are among the most well known Bombardier aircraft.
In October 2017, Bombardier announced that they would be partnering with Airbus in order to avoid President Trump’s steel tariffs and to expand production of more CSeries (renamed the A220) aircraft.
In February 2020, Bombardier sold their stake in the program due to financial issues, surrounding the insolvency of the train manufacturing division of the company.
Why Bombardier and Embraer can’t beat Airbus and Boeing…
As stated earlier, Airbus and Boeing are the two largest manufacturers in the industry. They are several times larger than Bombardier and Embraer.
Even if Bombardier and Embraer were to merge, they would still not be anywhere near the size of either Boeing or Airbus, no matter how hard they may try.
During Airbus vs Boeing debates, many people point out how neither Bombardier, nor Embraer are a sufficient threat to Boeing or Airbus for them to worry about. This is often the center of many articles entitled “Why Airbus vs Boeing debates need to stop“.
Due to their relative insignificance in terms of size when compared to Airbus and Boeing, Bombardier and Embraer have little to no brand recognition. It really is only av geeks, and those in aviation-related careers who’ve heard of Embraer and Bombardier.
If you were to ask most people to name an aircraft manufacturer, most of them would say either Airbus or Boeing. Very rarely would people mention any other manufacturer.
There’s also the fact that neither Bombardier nor Embraer dare challenge the supremacy of either Boeing or Airbus. Bombardier and Embraer tend to fight among each other rather than fight against the might or Boeing or Airbus.
Whilst this has helped to keep them in business, it has also led to most of the media attention being forced away from them and towards the Boeing-Airbus rivalry.
The last real competitor – McDonnell Douglas, was bought out by Boeing in 1995 in order to prevent any more competition, which has meant that Boeing and Airbus have reigned supreme, without anyone to challenge them.
And this is a reality that Embraer, especially knows all too well. They have tried to compete with Boeing twice in their history and it has not gone down too well for them.
The first time was during the late 1980s, and early 1990s, when they tried to produce an aircraft that was a direct competitor to the 737. Boeing made sure that this jet would never go any further than the drawing board, and had the US instate legislation against it.
This nearly bankrupted Embraer and was one of the reasons why it was privatized in the first place.
The second time was quite recently. In 2018, Boeing realized that the ERJ-195 was competing directly with Boeing’s new 737 MAX. Not wanting to miss out, Boeing again tried to force the company to stop producing the aircraft, to which Embraer doubled down.
Boeing realized that it couldn’t legislate Embraer into bankruptcy as it had done 20 years previously, so instead was forced to partner with Embraer in a joint venture, where they bought 80% of the commercial aircraft division of Embraer.
There is also a sense of:
If you can’t beat them, join them
Bombardier was the first of the two to join with Airbus, with Embraer following suit. The means that they will never be able to catch up to Airbus and Boeing due to the fact that it’s likely that Boeing will have Embraer engineers working on Boeing projects.
This is also likely to be the case for Airbus and the engineers who were working on the A220.
How would Embraer ever be able to develop newer and better aircraft if their brightest minds are working on the newest Boeing aircraft? How will Embraer be able to tell them to stop without being bankrupted themselves? And the same for Bombardier.
Bombardier and Embraer want to become better than Airbus and Boeing, yet they can’t without first bankrupting themselves to make that possible! Perhaps another player could enter the game with deeper pockets and outspend Boeing and Airbus into submission…
Why else do you think Bombardier and Embraer can’t beat Airbus and Boeing? Tell me in the comments!
Image credit Aero Icarus via Flickr