Originally Posted by rickair7777

I have a little inside baseball with Boeing.

It is most certainly NOT union sabotage, although that sort of things has happened before in other industries. This is aviation and those folks seem to have a higher sense of professional responsibility. That would be like ****ed off pilots rough-handling airliners to scare pax and get back at the company. Besides you'd be up on mass-murder charges if something happened.

The real problem with the 787 is that when the MBA's and been counters went looking for cheap labor offshore they somehow convinced themselves that they could get around the quality issue with ISO 9000 and similar certifications. Their fundamental gross conceptual failure was that many non-first world countries have inherently corrupt cultures (by western standards) and that anything like ISO 9000 is only as good as the people implementing it. This is amplified by the fact that they relied on offshoring for not just production but design as well.

There are very few places where you can have your cake and eat it to, ie low labor cost for skilled, quality labor and processes.

In retrospect, Boeing should have been far more selective in their outsourcing. After all is said and done I'm not sure they saved a dime.