Just a Minute!

With each delay of the Bad Dreamliner, Boeing's credibility takes a hit (8/14/09)

     Earlier this week I took my nephew to the Future of Flight Aviation Center & Boeing Tour in Everett. It’s billed as the only public tour of a commercial jet-assembly plant in North America.

     We went with high expectations. We were not hugely impressed. Our tour guide’s presentation was lame, and the enormous size and scope of the Everett factory are greatly diminished by an overarching sense of ennui on the assembly floor. Where one might expect to see a busy hive of activity, there is instead a systemic quietude.

     This, no doubt, is how high-tech airplanes are made in the 21st century, but it struck me as a splendid metaphor for the entire 787 Dreamliner project, which remains Boeing’s next great leap while simultaneously functioning as persistent albatross.

     Now delayed more often than a Metro bus in a Seattle snowstorm, the Dreamliner is fast becoming the clinical example of what happens when you overpromise and underdeliver.

     In this economy, airlines that have placed orders for 787s may be secretly cheering the many delays. But, like a tourist attraction that promises much and delivers little, the Dreamliner’s troubles ultimately speak to integrity and credibility.

     Without these, anything Boeing promises just won’t fly.

JUST A MINUTE! is a weekly essay intended to be read in about 60 seconds.