The Competitive Status of the U.S. Civil Aviation Manufacturing Industry: A Study of the Influences of Technology in Determining International Industrial Competitive Advantage (1985)

Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.

KEY POLICY ISSUES 141 6— Key Policy Issues In considering the likely competitive future of U.S. civil aircraft manufacture, one must examine separately the major elements of the industry: large transports, helicopters, and general aviation—including commuters, executive aircraft, and light aircraft. In large transports the U.S. position of dominance has been shaken but remains strong. The future environment will be different, however, and could be characterized as competitive international interdependence. Given the close tie between civil aviation and national security, it is in the national security interests of the United States to have a viable civil aviation industry—including both airlines and aircraft manufacture. If the United States were to end up with only one large air transport manufacturer (a scenario that is not too improbable) our long commitment to efficiency through competition would no doubt lead us to wish an alternative supply from some source. The challenge within the United States is to preserve the strength and effectiveness of the large transport industry as it accommodates to higher financial risks, increased competition, the need to assure access to foreign markets, and increased market uncertainty. The environment for the other categories of aircraft is different in character and scale. The smaller size and lower capital requirements to develop these aircraft and their powerplants make them a more suitable vehicle for many nations to enter the civil aircraft market. Since deregulation the U.S. market for commuter aircraft has been perceived as being much larger than in the past. U.S. manufacturers are now beginning to address these opportunities, but they are tardy compared with many foreign entries. Furthermore, they will find it necessary to penetrate world markets if they expect to achieve needed economies of scale. U.S. manufacturers do not start from a position of dominance in the market for smaller transport aircraft. However, when considering policy alternatives and priorities one cannot