Obituary: Jean Pierson 1940 -- 2021

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James R Hagerty, Top Airbus Executive Put Heat on Boeing.Wall Street Journal, Nov 6, 2021, at page A10.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/air ... -boeing-11636132346

Note:
(a)
(i) Jean Pierson is male, being French.
(ii) The English surname Pierson means child of a man whose personal (or given) name was Piers or Pierce -- the latter being "the usual Norman vernacular form of Peter." Dictionary of American Family Names.
(b) "in 1998, Airbus was a strong No 2 behind Boeing, which had swallowed up the other major player, in 1998, Airbus was a strong No 2 behind Boeing, which had swallowed up the other major player, McDonbnell Douglas Corp [in 1997]."
(i) it tries to say that without Boeing's swallowing up of McDonbnell Douglas Corp, the gap between Boeing as world's No 1 and Airbus as No 2 would have been smaller.
(ii) Based in St Louis, Missouri, McDonnell Douglas Corp (1967-1997) "was formed from the firms of James Smith McDonnell and Donald Wills Douglas in 1967. Both men were of Scottish ancestry, graduates of MIT and had worked for the aircraft manufacturer Glenn L Martin Company [founded by Glenn L Martin, who provided the name to today's Lockheed Martin]."  en.wikipedia.org for "McDonnell Douglas."

-------------text from paragraph 3 on (the URL supplies the first two paragraphs, out of five)
Robert Alizart, a former spolesman for Mr Pierson, confirmed the trousers story.

By the time Mr Poerson retired in 1998, Airbus was a strong No 2 behind Boeing, which had swallowed up the other major player, McDonbnell Douglas Corp. "We are not in this business to be a niche player," Mr Piersomn said at a press conference. "We want to be 50-50, which is in fact a polite version to one day being No 1."

By 2003, Airbus was consistently delivering more jetliners han Boeing. Last year, Airbus delivered more than three times as many jets as Boeing, hobbled by the grounding of its 737 MAX jet.