And a common thread amongst the posts of a very larger number of posters on blogs detailing bad news, delays, etc. at Boeing have pointed fingers, missiles, ICBM’s, etc. at Boeing management - more specifically, former MDC imported types.

While I’m in no state of mind to continue, here’s caution to the wind.

Something I read today - a letter to a local daily newspaper on the affairs of South African football (soccer). It goes like this:

A Japanese company (Toyota) and an American company (General Motors) decide to have a canoe race on the Missouri River. Both teams practised long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race. On the big day, the Japanese won by a mile. The Americans, very discouraged and depressed, decided to investigate the reason for the crushing defeat. A management team made up of senior management was formed to look into the matter and recommend appropriate action.
Their conclusion was the Japanese team had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, while the US team had 8 people steering and 1 person rowing.
So American management hired a consulting company and paid them a large amount of money for a second opinion. They advised that too many people were steering the boat, while not enough were rowing.
To prevent another loss to Japanese, the American rowing team’s management structure was totally reorganised to four steering supervisors, three area steering superintendents and one superintendent steering manager. They also implemented a new performance system that would give the one person rowing the boat greater incentive to work harder. It was called the ‘Rowing Team Quality First Program,’ with meetings, dinners and free pens for the rower.

The next year the Japanese won by two miles. Humiliated, the US management laid off the rower for poor performance , halted development of a new canoe, sold the paddles, and cancelled all capital investments for new equipment.
The money saved was distributed to the Senior Executives as bonuses and the next year’s racing team was outsourced to India!

Now, this leads further here to this - posted on flightglobal, the Q&A session with Jim McNerney, Boeing CEO & Chairman, on Boeing Q3 performance. Who does the buck stop with. Jim didn’t answer the question directly - as Jon was hoping - as each of us were hoping.

See, it’s become twisted. On one hand, would Boeing’s steering team have been able to launch the 787 if they had been less ambitious? Would they have been able to get investors to part with their unrealistic instant capital growth projections right away compared with a more realistic long term success (in aerospace)?
Are these steerers now just paying the price for indaquate industry-wide lack of planning so far as human capital is concerned? You know there’s a shortage of engineers from Rolls Royce right across Boeing?

I think they’re guilty of milking the publicity machine. That’s it. Luckily, the recession, and it’s a global one, serves as a nice cover.

On those exceptional right-downs. $2.5 billion for the all-new 787 - and an astonishing $1 billion for the highly-modified 747-8. Is the 747-8 that good? Wow. I can’t wait. Really. (Yes, I know that includes right-downs on market expectations.) (But even if the 747 is that good, it could never have flown before the 787. That would simply have been totally unacceptable to this management.)

The 787 charge was non-cash.

James Bell did mention a compensation figure for 2009. They did not say how many frames were affected, but applying it to the entire 787 order book, it works out to about $750,000 per ordered frame.

i think you need to repeat accounting 101

The loss in the 3rd quarter was generated by cash that was actually expended/disbursed in earlier accounting periods.

Does anyone know/ will anyone dare a guess at the total 787 programme cost so far?