THE GLOBAL COMBAT BETWEEN AIRBUS AND BOEING
By Scott Hamilton
Read the untold stories that reveal the man and strategies that changed aviation.
Air Wars: The Global Combat Between Airbus and Boeing examines the bare knuckle brawl between the two largest commercial aircraft companies in the world: Airbus and Boeing. Scott Hamilton, author and aviation journalist/analyst for over 40 years, pulls back the curtain on people, stories and behind-the-scenes wrangling that daylight what kept these aircraft behemoths from propelling each to claim the #1 status, or imploding altogether. Hamilton has drawn upon both his extensive records and relationships to reveal recent interviews of the principal players at Airbus, Boeing and within the industry, and details how Airbus forced Boeing’s hand into re-engining the 737. This is one of the most detailed and riveting tales of the biggest global commerce competition ever told.
Air Wars examines ground-breaking sales strategies, unprecedented scandals, what led to launch or not-to-launch decisions, what really led to the MAX, its grounding and the economic impacts, how Airbus was more willing to make risky sales moves than Boeing, and how Airbus surpassed Boeing in key markets around the world.
Air Wars will become a must-read for anyone in business, finance, institutional investments and, of course, aviation.
$24.95 Paperback
$9.99 E-Book
While the fierce battle between Boeing and Airbus has played out publicly over decades, Scott Hamilton takes readers behind the scenes and inside the companies to learn how Airbus overtook Boeing as the market leader. As we learn, it took a combination of leadership, flexibility and creativity to drive Airbus from a small player to the top spot in market share, airline by airline, lessor by lessor, sale by sale. Aviation enthusiasts (and anyone interested in business history) will enjoy this dissection of a monumental industry battle.
TERRY MAXON,
Airline reporter for the Dallas Morning News (retired);
co-author of Twelve Years of Turbulence.
Scott probably is the very best plugged-in reporter and analyst tracking those two companies that you can find anywhere. Not only does he know well all the key players in the industry, he understands what motivates them and animates their thinking. Thus, he’s simply excellent at both reporting and explaining what the world’s two biggest aircraft makers are doing and why they’re doing it. Through Scott, and through this book, readers who don’t already know this, will learn that both companies long have been run by men (and, pointedly, very few, if any women) for whom making the very best, most technically advanced and safest aircraft, was never a simple, pure goal. Profits, careerism, nationalism, politics, self aggrandizement, power and control, ego…and the list goes on.
DAN REED,
Airline industry reporter at FORBES.com, USA TODAY, and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram; author of American Eagle: The ascent of Bob Crandall and American Airlines, and co-author of American Airlines, US Airways and the Creation of the Worlds’ Largest Airline.
Air Wars is more than a story about the global combat between Airbus and Boeing. It’s a business strategy story pitting the world’s two giant airplane manufacturers against each other and how they pursued sales campaigns and product development. It’s how Airbus overtook the market leader, Boeing—and how Boeing’s own decisions helped lose that lead.
LAURA MUELLER,
Managing Director of AirFinance Journal.
Named to the Top 10 List of Aerospace Books for Christmas Choices, 2021
Royal Aeronautical Society
(Seattle area.) No. 1 on the Christmas list of aerospace books for 2021.
Puget Sound Business Journal
No. 1 on its list of Best New Aerospace eBooks to read in 2022.
BookAuthority
“A worthy successor to ‘The Sporty Game,’” the 1982 book by John Newhouse, considered at the time to be the definitive book about the competition between Boeing, McDonnell Douglas and the emerging Airbus.
CHRIS SLOAN,
The Airchive
Air Wars is a tour de force look behind the curtain of Boeing and Airbus’ global competition and, in part, a biography of Airbus’ head salesman, John Leahy, the man who forced Boeing’s hand to re-engine the 737. Longtime aerospace analyst and journalist Scott Hamilton takes readers through the twists and turns of the decades long battle between the two companies.
DAN CATCHPOLE,
Aviation Writer