On Thursday 23rd of May, Boeing decided to follow the path of Airbus, but in a different way. They have not renamed Embraer commercial aircraft into their own yet but they have renamed something, and that is the commercial sector, which is a big deal!
Embraer's commercial lineup will now become "Boeing Brasil Commercial", signalling a huge departure for Embraer as their commercial aircraft were the most successful for the company. Boeing now holds an 80% stake in Embraer and this also means that Embraer will now only focus on defense, military and business jets. Boeing will take control over the production of the E-Jet family's two generations (E170, E175, E190, and E195 as well as the E175-E2, E190-E2 and E195-E2).
Unfortunately, it does seem like Boeing is pretty bad with making names. Like come on, did you have to rename it to such a long name? Thankfully, they still kept Brazil's political sensitivity in mind, having Brasil with an S and putting Commercial after it.
While this event may not have such a good outcome in some ways, it does have a lot of positive aspects as well. Firstly, Boeing now have a series of regional jets which can rival the Bombardier/Airbus A220 partnership. Secondly, Boeing can mass produce Embraer's jets at a faster rate than Embraer can, which means that Embraer and Boeing can reduce the backlog of deliveries on the E-Jets.
With this move, there is speculation as to whether Boeing will rename the jets, since they haven't already. I honestly hope they don't, because it isn't fair toward Embraer as they don't get credit for their own aircraft (which is also how I feel about Airbus renaming the bombardier CSeries aircraft into the A220). Nevertheless, it's Boeing's decision to do so or not since the entire commercial sector of Embraer is now in their hands, and all we'll have to do is wait and see!
