Jetsetter

Well to start off you apparently think that Boeing forced McDonnell Douglas to let them buy them out. Remember, Douglas was in bankruptcy and was looking for a buyer. When Boeing bought them and paid off their debts, they we're entitiled to do whatever they wanted with Douglas. And the fact of the matter remains that Boeing wanted McDonnell Douglas's military engineering power (which they had a lot of), not their commerical aircraft line.

The 70,000,000 dollar difference probably comes down to development costs. It was a new plane designed from scratch and incorperated the new advances that Boeing had not yet used on other planes, IE, fly by wire. Whether this warrants that big of a price differences is not up to you or me to decide, but rather the people that are paid to work with numbers for a living.

I have absolutly no idea how you can say the 777 or MD-11 are gas guzzlers. Both were engineered in a time when fuel economics were become more obvious, especially to the airlines. In: When people said that MD-11 is gas guzzler and I do not buy to that. It is engine design that is causing poor result on an MD-11 even they have corrected all of the drag problems you're contradicting yourself. You've just said you don't believe that it's a gas guzzler, but you just said the engine design does just that. Paranoid Johnson? Or do you just hate General Electric and Pratt and Whitney?

Okay, now thats just bull****. Your blaming the 777 for these airlines bankruptcy? Maybe your still living in the Nixon era, but in case you didn't realize legacies are finding it harder to make a profit because of LOW COST AIRLINES, HIGH OIL PRICES, AN INTERNATIONAL DECLINE IN AIR TRAVEL BROUGHT ON BY A CERTAIN DAY IN SEPTEMBER, AND A ****TY AIRPORT EXPERIENCE, but not by a plane that makes up 1/75th of their fleet.

What does the 747 have to do with this? If anything your argument is that the 400 seat range of passenger capacity airliners is in the decline?

Or maybe because airlines can carry cargo on passenger aircraft as well? Dedicated freighter aircraft have never been, and most likely will never be, in such demand as one that carries both passengers and people. You can't say that there have been few orders for it because of its price because frankly you don't know. Boeing developed another freighter in addition to the 744F, whats the big deal?

There's not a great demand for MD-11's or MD-80's, because if there was then chances are McDD's Commercial division would still be around.

Parts will become a problem for the MD-11 because the MD-11 is out of production, which is thanks to the shortcomings of Douglas's sales team. New Airbuses are having trouble with finding spares but I don't see you bitching at them.

Overall the 777 won big time because it worked better for airlines. An airline is going to buy what works for them, not what seems nicer or families ties as shown by CR Smiths decision to buy the 707 rather than the DC-7, and even United, which was started by, you guessed it, Boeing. Apparently you don't have the full story because the MD-11 sold 200 frames and the 777-200 alone has sold over 400. Airlines don't give a toss if a plane is new or not, but if its going to make them more money than what the competition has to offer, then they're going to take it.