Spin

“Over the course of the past year, Boeing has walked right up to the delicate line that divides spin from plain dishonesty.”

That’s the blunt assessment of a publication that was once synonymous with quintessential reporting in all matters of aviation and aerospace. To somehow “trivialise” the design, manufacture, assembly and associated setbacks in the learning curve of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner into this outlandish and outright falsified statement beggars belief.

Perhaps the unnamed writer at Flight Global had a memory lapse and forgot such minuscule detail that as a publicly traded company, Boeing has a legal obligation with regard to the New York Stock Exchange and the Securities and Exchange Commission when providing its own statements and forward looking guidance.

Further, the fact that not a single Wall Street or any other analyst has ever come out and said that Boeing has been “dishonest” serves only to remind us that in the pursuit for information from the company, whether by direct approach or by clandestine methods, there are people and organisations that will stop at nothing to extract what they can in the delirious quest for web ratings.

Image courtesy of Boeing

Yes, analysts have been critical that Boeing has twice failed to meet its own revised targets on the 787, but that is by no means any indication that they believed the company lied or deliberately deceived anyone or set out to do so, whether by tacit or explicit acceptance of any guidance offered.

Critically, the two sets of people whom Boeing does owe and provides information to is a responsibility that the company has never shied away from.

Whether we like it or not, customers have been kept in the loop. If that means after news of a certain delay, so be it. That’s not being “dishonest” - that’s informing the customer based on changes in circumstances. The same applies to investors in the company too.

The only thing dishonest is the attitude displayed in the article that is better off not being linked here.

Spin on that, I say.

6 comments June 9th, 2008