2021-05-20T09:14:00+01:00 Your views about the aerospace industry and our reporting Healthy competition Whatever the unstated – and unwise – source for W D Barbut’s suggestion that Boeing “had once been promised that it would be the only airframe manufacturer for civil aircraft in the western world” ( Flight International, May 2021), there is no sudden or recent cause for “quiet rage that Boeing not only has a competitor now, but one that is even assembling some of its aircraft within the USA”. Why the “now”? Boeing facing European rivalry is not new: Eastern Air Lines fielded A300 from 1977 Competition from Airbus has been around for nearly 50 years – for part, at least, of which time Boeing has been playing catch-up to the Europeans’ technological lead.