Why have so many manufactures gone belly up?

RE: Why have so many manufactures gone belly up?

Hand87_5 (how on earth did you get that name?!?) – you’re so right. I used to have a Phillips V2000 and it was much better than VHS. You could record on both sides of the cassette.

RE: Why have so many manufactures gone belly up?

Apples are paperweights. User friendly? LOL, yeah right!

GD1

RE: Why have so many manufactures gone belly up?

I guess wysiwyg is right.

This problem doesn’t occurs only in Aviation.
It’s not because you have the best product that you gonna be the leader on the market.

Let me give some examples to you , were the worst product became the #1 on the market:

1) VCR : early 80’s 3 standards were competing : VHS (JVC) Betamax (Sony) and N2000 (not sure of the name) from Philips.
Vhs was the worst but became the reference.

2) Computer : In the 80’s (again) many competitors were fighting on this ramping up market : DOS (from who you know!!) Apple OS , Hewlett Packard (HP150) , many implementation of UNIX , Amstrad etc….

Who survived : the worst , I mean Microsoft.

Quality of product is not mandatory: That’s all about marketing , being on the market at the right time , having good political connections etc…

I guess that this last point is even more important in aviation since the choice of a type is sometime a political decision for some “state-owned” airlines.

RE: Why have so many manufactures gone belly up?

I both agree and disagree with you mixtec. Yes the Dash has proved to be the better aircraft as it has been able to be developed more into other variants which is where Saab went wrong. When Saab developed the 340 they had a great aeroplane, I should know I used to fly it! It was a superb route proving aeroplane but then when a route was established you need a bigger capacity aircraft to exploit it. Saab came up with the 2000 which performance wise is the mutts nuts. The only types that have rivalled it are the Do328 and the Dash 8-400 but these were several years later when Saab had done all the ground work for them. Saab proved that the improved performance allowed them to operate in the flight levels between 250 and 310 which are largely unused by jets. This allows them almost constant direct routings, very few airways slot delays and very little speed control. Where Saab went wrong is that they didn’t achieve common type ratings so that 340 pilots could fly the 2000. Therfore a company operating a mixed fleet has to have 2 sets of crews who are not interchangeable. Dash on the other hand have common type ratings for all their variants so mixed fleets become a very real solution allowing you to rout prove with 100’s and 200’s and then exploit with 300’s and 400’s. Dash eventually produced Q (quiet) variants using ANR (active noise reduction) after Saab pioneered the technology in later 340’s and all 2000’s.

Saab – now defunct following involvement of Fairchild
Fokker – now defunct following involvement of Fairchild
Dornier – now defunct following involvement of Fairchild

and several GA companies have suffered after Fairchilds involvement. Again this is just my opinion based on history!

RE: Why have so many manufactures gone belly up?

The Dash-8 is far supperior to the Saab2000, and exemplifies everthing a tuboprop airliner should be. The Saab2000 in my opinion is a lousy attempt to try do achieve jet performance with a tuboprop. It has a small narrow fuselage with giant engines, and a high wingloading that makes both lo and hi altititude performance a little to hot and therefoe dangerous for what a turbopop should be. The Dash-8 though not quite as fast as the Saab2000 is still quite fast for a turbopop at about 300 kts, that acheived with engines that are much smaller and a fuleslage thats much larger. Its a very safe plane to fly with excellent short takeoff and landing carachteristics and even rough field capability. Its also extremely quiet which I think is an important consideration as small airlines are populating more small outlying airports nowadays.

RE: Why have so many manufactures gone belly up?

It seems to me that whem you look back through turboprop history the arrival of Fairchild into any project seems to be a common link with ultimate doom!