Late last month, American Airlines announced what has been called the \u201clargest aircraft order in aviation history.\u201d Interestingly, it did not single source the order \u2013 it split the order of 460 aircraft between Airbus (260) and Boeing (200).<\/p>\n
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There is debate as to exactly why it split this order when, traditionally, airlines purchase aircraft from single manufacturers in order to take advantage of various efficiencies, most notably those that result in the lowest purchase price per plane.<\/p>\n
CBSNews.com says that \u201cmany industry analysts suspect the deal was motivated by the ongoing labor disputes at Boeing\u2019s assembly plants.\u201d In the video embedded below, one of those analysts said that Boeing has \u201chad some challenges with labor and people have been wondering if they were going to get their production lines in order in time to really sort of get some of these newer aircraft out.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the above-linked article, American Airlines insists that those labor issues were not a factor in the decision with their president quoted as saying \u201cOur needs were just so great, and we wanted to do this in such a big way, that one company, one manufacturer couldn\u2019t fulfill our needs in the timeframe.\u201d<\/p>\n
But it makes you wonder, doesn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n
Certainly a labor stoppage is a supply risk so common that it\u2019s mentioned in our 19-Point Supply Risk Checklist. Plus, it\u2019s a supply risk that is much more predictable than a natural disaster. So, it\u2019s not a bad idea to dual source if the threat of a labor stoppage is more than insignificant.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the video.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Late last month, American Airlines announced what has been called […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":4139,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-procurement"],"yoast_head":"\n