Hello List- A few thoughts on the announcement regarding France's extension of a REPAYABLE loan for the A380: - If you were the only other 100+ seat commercial airplane maker in the world and the only product you lacked in order to compete fully with your competitor, you would look at any possible option when it came to money. Boeing has a monopoly in the jumbo-jet market. The 747 is the only product available to the airlines. While the demand for this product is a different story, Airbus is making sure airlines have a CHOICE when looking into the purchase of airplanes. - Remember these are REPAYABLE loans. Airbus WILL still be required to pay back the loans. They're still paying back loans given to them years ago, so it's not like the government is just giving them money. (On a side note, do you think the European airlines are happy that our US-carriers received all that money, never to be repaid back to the gov't?) - What's it to us if they do this under the table or not? Boeing does receive indirect help from the government via the military. Give Boeing a military contract to develop some planes and who's to say where the money from that program goes to? I'm not pulling all this out of nowhere, just some thoughts because last week, I turned in an 80-page senior thesis on the privatization of Airbus as being the key element to its success in the commercial aviation market. ===== -Christopher Liao Pawtucket, Rhode Island Wooster, Ohio ================================ http://pages.wooster.edu/liaocl/ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Sports - live college hoops coverage http://sports.yahoo.com/