Flight of the Titans: Boeing, Airbus and the Battle for the Future of Air Travel

by Kenny Kemp

In the Super Bowl of the airline industry, there are two opposing Airbus of Europe versus Boeing of America. Both sides have only one goal—to become the world's leading aircraft maker. This is the remarkable account of Airbus' launch of the largest passenger plane ever to fly, and how they risked everything in a heavyweight contest where the money is staggering and the political stakes are high. The Airbus A380 will be a monster above the clouds with gyms, a nightclub in the sky, and a 550 passenger capacity, versus Boeing's super-efficient long distance Dreamliner's 200-350. Will the A380 super-jumbo succeed when it is launched in 2006? With Boeing determined that it will fail, the stakes are high. This amazing story of rivalry and risk is a fascinating insight to both Airbus and Boeing, as they take their steps to take off.

Genres: Nonfiction, Aviation

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Louis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whilst this book was very technical (too technical for me really) and despite reading it using synthetic speech, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Reading about the A380 and the competition with Boeing for advantage in the modern world of air travel was extremely interesting.

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kemp is a British writer that makes an effort to understand the battle between Boeing and Airbus. He did plenty of interviews with top people in both organizations and was one of the first to publish a book on the subject. There have been many more since than and each one gets better. Two flaws with the Kemp book are his bias towards Airbus and his narrow look at business strategy. He comes close to showing that Airbus and Boeing were hedging against the others strengths by developing several models of planes. In the end though he jumps back to his analysis of the dreamliner vs. the A380 and does not look at the wider market of the companies. As the book progresses forward the analysis does get better and the real competition becomes apparent. The salesmanship of the Airbus team against the engineering of the Boeing. The size of Airbus vs. the speed of Boeing are all played out through this struggle. The book jumps around quite a bit but it does provide a good start for the time it was published. I do recommend this book but just be warned the beginning is slow and the analysis could be a little more focused.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the first half of this book quite heavy going and struggled to get into it as it plodded through potted histories of Boeing and Airbus. Once it became up to date, it was much more interesting and the battle for passenger dominance between the Airbus A380 and Boeing 787 is well documented, although the winner is yet to be decided. The book is for flying buffs only, however, and I felt that while this industry must be populated with countless colourful people and incidents there are few I can recall in the book. It is often a bit of a dry and flat read, and I think a much more swashbuckling account could have been written, but I have that complaint about a lot of "airplane" books - they feel like they've been written by engineers who relate to the technology and events more than to the people involved.

[Stephen Cotten · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's an interesting book about the jet-age history of Boeing and Airbus, but the book is horrifyingly biased. Boeing's military sales are hidden subsidies designed to stifle competition in the civilian airliner market, while direct government support for Airbus is a glorious example of European cooperation and government support for high technology.