Airbus made a dumb bet. It thought that what the world’s airlines wanted was bigger airplanes. What they’d really like, of course, is economic supersonic aircraft, but none (or, should I say, neither?) of the major aircraft manufacturers understand the problem well enough to go after that market.

Now, it turns out that, for some strange reason, their customers (and their customers’ customers, the actual passengers) didn’t want airplanes that took a humungous amount of time to board and unboard, and wouldn’t fit in many of the existing terminal gates. Not to mention how attractive a target a 900-passenger aircraft would be to a terrorist…

Somehow, while Boeing hasn’t been impressive in the commercial air industry as of late, I don’t think that they would have made a marketing blunder like this, if for no other reason than, well…they haven’t. They’ve been looking into more economical smaller planes instead (though they still don’t understand the supersonic issues). Only a quasi-government aircraft company like Airbus could get way with a dumb decision like this one, and I suspect that they’ll be bailed out of any negative consequences.