Traveling through the sword to engage in military industry.

The news of Airbus's major capacity expansion was not blocked but was directly delivered to major airlines, giving reassurance to major customers who had placed orders.

When the news reached the other side of the ocean, North American aviation giants could no longer sit still and began to gather again for discussions.

"Ladies and gentlemen, Airbus' momentum is now unstoppable. How should we respond now? If we don't find a solution for regional jets, this market will be occupied by Airbus' A300." Boeing Vice President Hegel spoke first.

"If there are no new models with performance close to that of this Airbus aircraft, we will have no chance in this segment. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a very important turning point in our North American aviation industry. If we do not have strong means to respond, then our situation in the airliner industry will become increasingly passive." Vice President Douglas Williams Martinez also expressed a pessimistic attitude.

But this is not their purpose today.

After they finished speaking, the representatives of McDonnell and Lockheed looked at each other and did not speak for a long time. They were already at a disadvantage in terms of passenger aircraft. Although they were both developing passenger aircraft, so far, neither company's passenger aircraft had entered the mainstream model. Although this situation increased the difficulty of their impact on passenger aircraft, the main market of the two companies was fighter jets, and the market share of the passenger aircraft market had not yet affected their survival.

So they are relatively the least anxious.

They just waited to see what Boeing and Douglas wanted to do.

Vice President Hegel of Boeing saw that McDonnell and Lockheed were silent, and the scene suddenly fell into a strange silence. He could only speak up himself, "Everyone, the research and development of each passenger aircraft is a huge expense. From now on, if the four of us continue to fight on our own and do not unite to cooperate in passenger aircraft, then in the face of Airbus's aggressive market offensive, none of us four may be a match. But if we can unite and concentrate all our efforts on researching new models, then our future will be very promising. We have strong capital and production capacity to cope with any challenge from our opponents."

After Boeing Vice President Hegel finished speaking, McDonnell Vice President Tim showed an incredible look on his face. Obviously, he had not thought of this option beforehand. They are now real market competitors in China. From the perspective of domestic antitrust laws, such blatant market monopoly is not supported. So after a moment of silence, McDonnell Vice President Tim asked: "Sir, if the four of us join forces to research passenger aircraft, how do we deal with antitrust laws and how do we distribute them to protect the interests of each company?"

"Now facing the huge pressure from Airbus and the special research and application situation in the aviation industry, there is no longer a situation where we will dominate the market after the merger. According to our prior communication with the commercial antitrust department, it is unanimous that the merger in the civil aviation industry does not constitute a monopoly.

As for the cooperation model, we think Airbus's model is very good, so we will adopt the cooperation model of Dongda and John's family. The alliance will use the investment of the cooperative R&D company as the basis for dividing the shareholding ratio. In the future, dividends and aircraft production capacity will be distributed according to this share ratio. Now each of us has an aircraft production line. After appropriate adjustments and renovations, these production lines can be fully adapted to the production of passenger aircraft and fighter jets. In this way, each of us can protect our own interests. "

When Boeing Vice President Hegel said this, Douglas Vice President Williams Martinez was not surprised, but McDonnell Vice President Tim and Lockheed Martin Vice President Martin Jr. were excited. They had long wanted to enter the field of passenger aircraft. Lockheed had already developed the Constellation and Super Constellation passenger aircraft, but they were both the first generation of propeller aircraft. Now they are also working hard to design a new generation of jet aircraft, but they have fallen far behind Boeing and Douglas. If the two companies are willing to share this market together, then it is not impossible for them to accept it.

"Will the four of us share the shares of the new United Airlines equally?" McDonald's Vice President Tim asked excitedly.

After the war, although several major battles consumed a lot of fighter jets, there is no doubt that the global fighter jet market has become limited, and the hope for the future development of the aviation industry lies in civil passenger aircraft.

Now, after more than a decade of rapid development of the global economy as a whole, the development of the world's aviation industry has more than doubled. Not to mention anything else, the development of the North American aviation industry alone has increased more than tenfold in the past decade, and the number of passengers in European and transoceanic transportation has also increased by the same order of magnitude.

This led to a golden decade of rapid development for the civil aviation industry. Douglas and Boeing, which took the lead in fully transforming themselves into civil passenger aircraft, made a fortune and became the leaders among the four major aviation giants, and their leading advantage continued to grow.

"Of course not." Boeing Vice President Hegel said without hesitation, "Although it is a joint venture, we also need to negotiate the shares of the giants based on the technical strength and capital investment of each company. The civil aviation industry is not a military fighter, and the technology required is also very different. Even in terms of after-sales, there is a huge need for an operation and maintenance system. Boeing and Douglas have invested huge manpower and material resources in the after-sales system, which McDonnell and Lockheed do not have. We need to make a reasonable assessment based on the current market situation and confirm the share situation of each company."

So that's how it is. The representatives of McDonnell and Lockheed immediately lost a lot of interest. If they were to divide the companies based on their current market status, the two companies didn't have much market share to begin with, and they would probably only get single-digit shares in the joint company. This little bit of information would not impress them.

It is impossible for the two companies to give up the initiative in the future development of the civil aviation industry and follow Boeing and Douglas to eat the leftovers. Boeing Vice President Hegel seems to have drawn a pie, but on this big pie, most of it has already been taken into his own mouth, and the two companies may just leave a little leftovers.

"Lockheed has no interest in participating in this joint project if it does not have more than 20% of the shares," said Lockheed's Vice President Martin. "Otherwise, Lockheed will continue to advance its own jet super constellation civil airliner project."

Vice President Martin was too lazy to pretend. He had long lost interest in this kind of seminar.

In the final analysis, they are all trying to compete for dominance. Now Lockheed does not have the ability to dominate the civil aviation industry, so it is more or less meaningless to participate in such things. "Mr. Martin, everything can be discussed. Please put the overall situation of our North American aviation industry first. Airbus in Europe has put tremendous pressure on us in civil aviation. If we do not take action, when they complete the delivery of Airbus A300 in ten years, the world's civil aviation will be full of Airbus aircraft." Boeing Vice President Hegel said righteously, elevating himself to the height of the savior of the aviation industry.

"Mr. Hegel, if you think we are important, then the best outcome is that each company holds 25% of the shares. It's not that we at Lockheed cannot come up with the investment funds. Apart from that, I don't think there are any special reasons that need to be considered that would affect the ownership of the shares. As for the after-sales system of Boeing and Douglas, we can make reasonable acquisitions of this after-sales system after the establishment of the United Civil Aviation Company. In this way, the interests of Boeing and Douglas will not be harmed in the slightest. We will have the strongest after-sales service system and R&D system on the planet. This is the most reasonable way for the development of our civil aviation industry." Vice President Martin Jr. counterattacked bluntly.

"Only when our interests are highly consistent can our actions be coordinated and unified. I believe this is the best way for our North American aviation industry to unite. After uniting in this way, each of us will update and renovate the production line. According to the current production line situation, the investment required to update the equipment is estimated to be less than 20 billion US dollars. As for this production line transformation, we at Lockheed are willing to bear it ourselves, and I don't think McDonnell will have any objection." Vice President Martin Jr. said.

When Vice President Tim of McDonald heard what Vice President Martin said, his eyes flickered and he quickly agreed, "We at McDonald fully agree with Mr. Martin's proposal. We think this proposal is quite fair and is very beneficial for mobilizing the technical strength of the entire aviation industry to compete with Airbus. We must act in unison under the condition of common interests, otherwise McDonald will pay a lot but get little benefit, and McDonald's shareholders will not agree to such a plan."

The two companies immediately broke the strategy that Boeing and Douglas had agreed on in advance. Vice President Williams Martinez saw that the situation was not right and quickly stepped forward. "Mr. Martin and Mr. Tim, please calm down. Let's discuss the merger first. After this matter is settled, we can discuss the distribution of shares. This way, we can do it one by one, so as to avoid pulling each other and making it difficult to reach a conclusion."

"Mr. Martinez, this is the thing. Let's finalize the shares first, and then discuss the joint model, then things will be very easy to proceed." Vice President Martin Jr. ignored Vice President Williams Martinez's attempts to smooth things over and delay the matter. In this kind of situation, there is absolutely no way to finalize the cooperation without even discussing the shares.

The four-party peace talks ended in a bad mood.

Of course, this is also because McDonnell and Lockheed knew nothing about this matter beforehand and were caught off guard by Boeing and Douglas.

However, after both parties reported to the board of directors, the boards of directors of the two companies basically agreed with the opinions of Vice President Martin and Vice President Tim, that is, there is nothing to talk about the issue of shares, and the four companies should divide it equally. Otherwise, the companies will suffer great losses in subsequent production, dividends, etc. Without reasonable shares, how can we ensure that the distribution of production line capacity of each company is fair and just in the future? Now the four companies have the same share ratio, so no company can cover the sky with one hand when voting. This is the ideal structure for protecting everyone's interests.

In comparison, the cooperation between Dongda and Oulu progressed much more smoothly. Soon the two sides turned the intentions of President Robert and General Manager Chen Hanyuan into thick contracts and cooperation agreements. Several infrastructure construction teams from Dongda gathered and took their equipment on more than a dozen giant ships of tens of thousands of tons and headed straight for Oulu. They were going to carry out civil engineering construction on the land designated by the other party.

At the same time, most of the more than 100,000 junior students selected from industrial colleges and universities across the country will enter Yandu Aviation Industry to start apprenticeships, and a small number (thousands) will go to Europe to learn about the engineering and manufacturing experience of factories in the European aviation industry chain.

The advantages of the national system are fully demonstrated in this situation. Large-scale selection and transfer are orderly and rapid. Even if there are minor twists and turns in the middle, such as some ulterior motives hearing about this aviation industry feast and making some small moves to squeeze their own people in, no one can stop this major trend.

Dongda and Europe began to vigorously carry out the construction of aviation industry infrastructure.

In North America, after some bargaining among the four aviation giants, Douglas and McDonnell actually merged under the impetus of the shareholders behind them!

In this way, the Big Four in North America became the Big Three!
Boeing, which originally hoped to maintain its leading position, did not expect the situation to turn out like this!
There was no possibility of merging with Lockheed, but Lockheed was forced to find an ally under the pressure of the merger of McDonnell and Douglas. It merged with the second-tier Northrop Corporation to become Lockheed Northrop Corporation, and continued to strengthen its strength to avoid being merged by Boeing.

This is basically consistent with the evolution in the main world's time and space, but it is much earlier in time.

The changes made the world's aviation industry overwhelmed. After the reshuffle, the newly established McDonnell Douglas became the first in terms of strength! Lockheed Martin and Boeing are now on par with each other. Boeing, which has failed to achieve its goal, continues to pursue its own plan. Boeing has to advance the Boeing 727 three-engine narrow-body jet airliner project on its own.

McDonnell Douglas was pushing forward the development of the DC-9. Inspired by the Airbus A300, they chose a twin-engine structure, equipped with the Pratt & Whitney JT8D turbofan engine that was still under development. The three-engine DC-10 passenger aircraft entered the pre-research stage. They would wait and see the progress of Boeing's 727 before deciding whether to actually go ahead with it.

In this regard, Boeing and McDonnell Douglas decided to draw a clear line with Rolls-Royce and firmly follow the technology route of North America priority.

However, Lockheed-Knopp, which started from scratch, weighed the pros and cons and decided to follow Boeing's 727 and choose a three-engine architecture. However, the engine was unexpectedly cooperated with Rolls-Royce, and they were going to use the RB211 three-rotor turbofan engine that Rolls-Royce and Dongda were developing! However, the name Super Constellation was not used, and they decided to name this new passenger plane L-1011 TriStar.

(End of this chapter)