Suppose you want to boycott Boeing. A Boeing aircraft is probably not on your shopping list, so you can't simply scratch Boeing off your shopping list as easily as you can a Dell product, for example. But there are some things you can do to reduce money that ultimately feeds Boeing.
Boeing has a duopoly with Airbus (detailed on wikipedia).
Most airlines own both Boeing and Airbus products, so it would be impractical to extend the boycott to all airlines that have Boeings in their inventory. But there is a bias. Some airlines have a strong majority of Boeings in their fleet compared to Airbus. Here is a sampling of some of the large carriers:
| Airline | Active Boeing assets (%) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Aer Lingus | 7.8% (4/51) | source |
| Air Berlin | 0.0% (0/84) | source |
| Air Canada | 36.9% (62/168) | source |
| Air China | 51.7% (200/387) | source |
| Air France | 31.6% (71/225) | source |
| Alitalia | 9.8% (10/102) | source |
| American Airlines | 48.7% (452/928) | source |
| British Airways | 47.0% (126/268) | source |
| China Eastern Airlines | 3.7% (16/428) | source |
| Delta | 57.0% (479/840) | source |
| Finnair | 0.0% (0/47) | source |
| Iberia | 0.0% (0/78) | source |
| Japan Airlines | 100.0% (163/163) | source |
| KLM | 88.8% (103/116) | source |
| Korean Air | 75.3% (119/158) | source |
| Lufthansa | 13.7% (37/271) | source |
| Swiss Global Air Lines | 33.3% (6/18) | source |
| United Airlines | 78.6% (578/735) | source |
| Virgin Atlantic | 56.8% (21/37) | source |
Choose a threshold. I recommend boycotting airlines with a Boeing inventory over ~40%. If an airline of interest is not in the table above, simply look it up on airfleets.net. To exclude it, you'll need the 2-letter IATA code, which appears in the airfleets.net record as the first token in the "codes" field.
In addition to avoiding Boeing-dominant airlines, it's also a good idea to exclude flights on Boeing aircraft from your airfare search. Here's how:
- Go to ITA software
- Fill out the search form as you normally would
- Click on "
Advanced routing codes", and notice that a new field box appears to enter outbound and return routing codes. - In all the advanced routing codes boxes, paste this:
/-airlines UA KL VS AA DL KE JL CA BA; -aircraft t:703 t:707 t:70F t:70M t:717 t:721 t:722 t:727 t:72B t:72C t:72F t:72M t:72S t:72X t:72Y t:731 t:732 t:733 t:734 t:735 t:736 t:737 t:738 t:739 t:73C t:73F t:73G t:73H t:73J t:73M t:73W t:73X t:73Y t:741 t:742 t:743 t:744 t:747 t:74C t:74D t:74E t:74F t:74H t:74J t:74L t:74M t:74N t:74R t:74T t:74U t:74V t:74X t:74Y t:752 t:753 t:757 t:75F t:75M t:75T t:75W t:762 t:763 t:764 t:767 t:76F t:76W t:76X t:76Y t:772 t:773 t:777 t:77F t:77L t:77W t:788 t:789 t:B72
That will exclude all flights that make use of a Boeing aircraft from the search results. Why is that a good idea? A pilot is either a Boeing pilot or an Airbus pilot. Rarely is a pilot trained in both. Riding on a Boeing aircraft feeds Boeing pilots, who exclusively cater for Boeing products. The syntax above also excludes airlines that substantially feed Boeing.
Extra nerd notes
The "-" prefix to "airlines" means to exclude the airlines that follow. Likewise for "-aircraft". Omit the dash to accept only listed aircraft or airlines. A forward-slash ("/") is needed to the left of these options, but to the right of any route constructions that you add. The semi-colon (";") is a necessary separator between "-airlines" and "-aircraft" arguments. Commandline nerds who want to know how to derive that syntax may want to run this:
$ lynx -dump -nolist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ICAO_aircraft_type_designators | awk 'BEGIN{ORS=" ";} tolower($0) ~ /boeing/{print "t:"$2}'
or
$ lynx -dump -nolist https://www.flugzeuginfo.net/table_accodes_iata_en.php | awk 'BEGIN{ORS=" ";} tolower($0) ~ /boeing/{print "t:"$1}'
Don't forget to prefix the /-aircraft. Note that the flugzeuginfo list was more complete than the wikipedia list at the time of this post.
Why boycott Boeing and General Electric?
See the chart:
General Electric is a good extension to the boycott. Boeing has made a deal with General Electric to ensure that some Boeing aircraft can only be fitted with GE engines. It turns out that General Electric (a former ALEC member) is itself very boycott-worthy anyway because it has a hand in the same evils as Boeing. Also note that Airbus does not contribute to any of the above-illustrated problems.
It will not be immediately obvious to everyone why drug testing is such a bad idea. I suggest this article for more detail.
Any other ideas for how consumers can ensure that they do not feed Boeing? Please feel free to reply below.