Boeing

Three of the most important things in business mirror priorities in real estate. They are location, location and location. Companies have identities, and they lose them by moving around in search of cheap labor and tax dodges. Neither route leads to greatness.

Boeing was Seattle. It helped build the community, and it was part of it. While the company is still strong in Washington, it is now an outsider. The trust is gone. First individuals were disposable. Then, Seattle was. Now, Boeing is no more a part of Seattle than it is Chicago. Who would welcome them?

Air travelers wouldn't. Every Boeing product looks exactly like the last. An airport picture from the 1970s looks like an airport now. The wings are folded up on the ends, but that's the only visible improvement. From the outside, you can't see the seats growing smaller and smaller.

Boeing does not aspire to greatness. In spite of similar subsidies to their competition, they are incapable of keeping up. If Aesop were alive today, he would write about Boeing and Airbus as two competitors who went to sleep and completely forgot that they were in a race.

Airbus deserves special mention. They are such non-entities, that they can't get their own section on this blog. Think about it. Air Bus. The company looks like it was born out of a strict truth-in-advertising law. As soon as someone finds a way to put turnstiles in the sky, the evolution of air travel will be complete.

Meanwhile, Boeing is building the Dreamliner. It sounds better than calling it the Vaporwareliner. Having outsourced everything everywhere, they are discovering that final assembly is harder than they thought. When the new plane is put into service, those of us who are passengers will wait through longer delays and sit in the smaller seats while someone in a faraway boardroom smiles about saving money. No one will think it's an achievement, because for passengers, it will be the same as every other plane.

Airlines

Before deregulation, flying was a big deal. It was something to brag about. People who flew were the envy of everyone else. Those who flew a lot were part of the jet set.

Now, telling people you're flying brings sympathy. Too bad. Maybe you won't have to go next time.

The problem is cramped seats. Every dimension has shrunk over time. Seat pitch measures the distance from one fixed point on a seat to the same fixed point on the seat behind it. Over time, it has gone from about 36 inches to 30. That's a rough average.

Measure the seat pitch in your car. No matter how small it is, the seat pitch for your commuter car is longer than it is for airlines that carry people on long trips.