Originally Posted by
bhrubin
That is hilarious. Airbus DID bet wrong--by the simple fact that Airbus "simply estimated demand incorrectly". Just because you used different words doesn't mean they don't mean exactly the same thing.
So you equate their business planning to "making bets"?
And how does (for the part you conveniently cutout) their planning account for unknown and unknowable events - after all, if "making a bet" & getting it wrong is somehow important then you can no doubt point to some subsequent event that this had a result upon (eg. the company going under) or something that they should have been able to predict, etc? Spending all this time going on and on about it is otherwise just making noise.
[removed quote of and response to now-deleted material]
As I said, Airbus has so far taken a loss on the A380
and so what if they do? Give it ~20 years and re-visit the question. Maybe things will have changed again and they'll be up to 500-700 orders over time. Or maybe not. Again, Airbus isn't going to go under from it.