Comparative study of Boeing and Airbus – Part I

With the tragic accident of Air India Flight 171 at Ahmedabad on June 12, 2025, the focus has fallen on safety and reliability of jet aircraft in general, and the Boeing 787 Dreamliner specifically.

- CAPT. G. A. FERNANDO

Other aspects of that event aside, there is a probably little-known nexus between Air India and Boeing aircraft: In 1962 India's flag carrier became not only the world's first all-jet airline but also the first jet-equipped airline in Asia when it began operating a fleet of Boeing 707-420 aircraft

Today, Boeing and Airbus are the world's two leading manufacturers of commercial airplanes. But those companies' histories are diverse in terms of their origins in Boeing's case spanning nearly 110 years and evolution. This article seeks to explore those manufacturers' stories and products in some detail

Introduction

William E. Boeing was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1881, to an Austrian mother, Marie Ortmann, and German father, Wilhelm Böing. When his father died in 1890, nine-year-old William moved to Europe with his mother and sister. After the widowed Marie remarried, she returned to the USA with her son (now known as William Boeing) and daughter.

Having enrolled in Yale University's Sheffield Scientific School in 1898, William Boeing dropped out in 1903 to enter the lumber business in the Pacific Northwest of Washington state, an industry in which his father had made a modest fortune. Not to be outdone, the younger Boeing also prospered on the strength of a construction boom, shipping lumber to the USA's east coast, via the newly-built Panama Canal.

However, in 1914, William and a friend, Conrad Westervelt, became interested in flying machines. A joy flight with an itinerant barnstormer pilot in 1915 inspired them to build their own airplane. But before constructing an aircraft they had to learn to fly. So the pair took flying lessons at the Glenn L. Martin flying school in Los Angeles, California, and bought their first flying machine, a Martin seaplane.