How did Airbus eat into Boeing's market share over the years?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Airbus had, over a period of time, steadily swallowed up Boeing’s customers. Currently 10% of the big commercial airplanes in the US are Airbus models and Airbus expects to have 20% market share by 2005. Boeing used to have over 66% of market share worldwide. Airbus was challenging its dominance in most markets. The market share is now more like 50-50. Only the largest 747s differentiate Boeing from Airbus, that is, Boeing does not have competition in this segment. But for every other airplane that Boeing sells, Airbus sells a similar one. Airbus aircraft also had technological advantages over the Boeing planes. The A320, A330 and A340 included features like active controls, variable camber ring, fly-by-wire, digital auto flight systems, side stick controllers, and advanced composite materials in the aircraft structure. Later on several of these technologies were incorporated into the new versions of Boeing as well but Airbus was the pioneer. Airbus suspected that Boeing was subsidizing the prices on its smaller aircraft using profits from the 747. The only competition that Airbus could offer was with bigger versions of its long-range A340. So Airbus decided to bet the company on producing the Airbus A380 to take the Boeing 747 head-on.