How Boeing Defied the Airbus Challenge: An Insider's Account Review

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(More customer reviews)I love aviation in general and jetliners in particular, so I was pleased (disclosure) when my longtime friend Mohan Pandey wrote this book. While it covers familiar Boeing and Airbus products and history, it does so in a new way in the context of "ETOPS." If you haven't heard of ETOPS ("extended operations"), it's the global regulatory framework that makes air travel safer on long overwater routes that take jetliners far from alternate airports.
The heart of this book is a huge, no-hold-barred battle fought under the radar by Airbus and Boeing. Waged in the ETOPS arena, this all-out warfare pitted the four-engine Airbus A340 against the twin-engine Boeing 777 and also involved the Airbus A380 super jumbo. For both companies, the stakes were staggeringly huge and the consequences of failure too dire to contemplate. Amazingly, the world scarcely knew this clash of titans was even taking place and remains largely oblivious of its outcome. The dramatic results -- and I'm dodging a spoiler here -- will continue to shape the destinies of both companies well into the future.
The author had a front-row seat as Boeing's chosen representative at ETOPS deliberations around the world. The forums Pandey participated in or led (working side by side with Airbus experts and other parties) collectively shaped this evolving regulatory framework over a quarter century. A retired Boeing aeronautical engineer, Pandey uses his insider's perspective to explain Airbus' great gamble: a carefully crafted "pincer strategy" whose intent was to trump the U.S. company and end its traditional dominance. Then things went wrong and ETOPS suddenly took on new meaning and urgency for Airbus....
The subject is contentious enough that this book may elicit charges of bias. However, I was struck by the author's constant evenhandedness and gentle tone, which may in part be a product of his unusual background (he was born in Nepal, won a fully paid scholarship to study in England, and with an aeronautical engineering degree in hand followed his love of aviation to Boeing). I also enjoyed Pandey's personal glimpses of what it was like to work a satisfying job that took him again and again to the far corners of the world.
The author does an excellent job explaining the airplanes, technology, and strategic factors, and his gift for storytelling is such that I found I couldn't put the book down in the latter chapters. So if like me you love aviation and you're ready to have your eyes opened to an epic and internecine battle in the skies, this may be the book for you.

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For the first time since WWII, a European airplane manufacturer, Airbus, not only succeeded in challenging Boeing, the storied American aviation titan, but also nearly crippled the giant-a fate fully realized by McDonnell Douglas, a previous American icon. This book chronicles an insider's account of more than two decades of how Boeing fought back in the extremely fierce, high-stakes, and highly political quest for global aviation supremacy. The book also shows how the industry shapes the regulations and, working with the regulators, how it has changed the direction of aviation.

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