A prominent aerospace analyst has floated a worst-case scenario that two years ago wouldn't have been thought plausible.
The 787 could easily get mired down in more delays. And "there's also an unlikely but not impossible worst-case scenario: a 787 that's simply a mediocre aircraft," writes Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst with the Teal Group Corp.
And if that is the case, he adds, Boeing can thank its merger with McDonnell Douglas, which replaced leadership with people who cared most about money. Boeing's all new 787 Dreamliner program has been delayed by two years, which has made the company ripe for criticism and analysis.
From Aboulafia's most recent aircraft letter:
The proven Boeing track record ("We're ten for ten!") has been replaced by the unpleasant memory of McDonnell Douglas's checkered past. The nickel and dimed MD-11 mediocrity, the useless MD JSF competitor, the out-of-control cost overruns of the C-17, and worst of all, the scandalous MD/GD A-12 carrier stealth attack plane. The likely (or at least hopeful) scenario is that the 787winds up like the C-17, a nightmare development program followed by an impressive technical achievement and a profitable production phase. But we can't rule anything out. The A-12 is the most haunting extreme outlier: a mere Potemkin Village plane. Those of us at the 7-8-07 rollout wouldn't have dreamt of that comparison at the time. But who knows what to believe anymore?
In short, the 787 has become less of an adrenaline rush of optimism, and more of await-and-see story.
Boeing's latest delay -- its fifth -- and purchase of supplier Vought combine to prove that the company's strategy of saving money from outsourcing work to suppliers "has been dwarfed by the cost of remedying the damage wrought by that strategy."
"This is all seriously bad," Aboulafia said. "As we digested the news, I paused to reflect on just what a tremendous drug-like rush the 787 program once was, and just what a ghastly let down it has become."
What was supposed to be a category killer has turned out to be even worse than the "commercially irrelevant" Airbus A380, Aboulafia said. Because, at least the A380 flies.
Finally, Aboulafia brings a sense of history to the present:
To understand how this happened, you need to look back in time. A grossly oversimplified recent history of Boeing: Twelve years ago McDonnell Douglas effectively used Boeing's money to buy Boeing. This resulted in a struggle between a faction that wanted to invest in Boeing's future (basically the legacy Boeing crowd) and a faction that wanted to invest in Boeing's shareholders (basically the McDonnell Douglas leadership).
The future investment faction won, but at a price: the McDonnell Douglas zombie bit them before it died. To sell the new plane to the board and to investors, they needed to get as much cost and risk as possible off Boeing's books. This resulted in a short-sighted decision to trust enormous parts of the 787's development and integration work to partners, without due diligence to ensure that these partners were up to the job. (Disclosure: I was a big fan of this approach at the time, and I still think production work outsourcing is a good idea.)
. . . Finally, the new Boeing also disempowered the company's engineers, turning its back on a decades-old management culture that didn't always produce profits but did always produce great planes. Instead, it embraced McDonnell Douglas's culture of leadership by money people.
Read the whole letter, as well as more history, at
http://www.richardaboulafia.com.
Aboulafia isn't the first person to talk this way. Recently, the Qatar Airways CEO blasted the company, saying it is run by "bean counters and lawyers."
Related:
Boeing culture: Kill the messenger vs. speak truth to power
Delaying the 787 first flight: Is Boeing's credibility shot?
Report: If Dreamliner fails, Boeing becomes GM of the skies
Posted by Andrea James at July 10, 2009 2:37 p.m.
).
... En conclusión, este tema me parece muy "delicado" de tratar, dado que hay que tener en cuenta miles de cosas que están sucediendo actualmente, solo espero que sea cual sean los planes de Avianca con su nueva flota tanto 787 como 350 sea lo mejor para sus planes a futuro con nuevas rutas. Saludos a todos!. 
- By MonitorPPL
- By Andaltor
- By Julardo