There's a little more to the story than face value...Boeing essentially had the whole thing locked up a few years ago, but they got caught bribing an air force acquisition official. John McCain blew the whole thing out of the water...she went to jail, along with a couple of Boeing employees IIRC, and McCain forced the pentagon to un-award the Boeing tanker deal and go to open bid. Airbus was obviously able to compete effectively in the open bid.

Around the same time, Boeing also got caught stealing Lockheed bid info in a government satellite launch deal. Needless to say Lockheed got some extra launches out of that one

Boeing then instituted a top-down ethics overhaul, led by a hand-picked CEO. The new ethics program wrapped up after the married CEO got caught sleeping with a staffer