Jet set

An insider’s view of the international marketing of commercial aircraft; the intense and growing competition between the Boeing Company and France’s Airbus Industria. The program profiles the two presidents of these competing commercial airplane companies. Boeing’s commercial aircraft president, E.H. “Tex” Boullion is known in his business as a supersalesman. Known as a gambler, he takes calculated risks for Boeing, the predominant U.S. aircraft manufacturer in the commercial aviation field. Bernard Lathiere, president of Airbus, is a highly educated French technocrat, multilingual and commited to his common market enterprise, a multinational manufacturing company which has significantly cut into the massive share of the world market for commercial airlines held for the last two decades by Boeing. THE JET SET eavesdrops on both Boeing and Airbus at the Paris Air Show where these high rollers of commercial aviation come to sell their wares. This year the two giants jockey over what they call the “hole in the sky”, a short to medium range, fuel efficient plane that will replace the Boeing 747. The program is hosted by Eric Sevareld. This program is part of the ENTERPRISE series and is a coproduction of KCTS/9 in Seattle and WGBH/ Boston. It was filmed in Seattle, Los Angeles, Miami and Paris. Certain production costs were shared with Antenne 2 of France.