But it should be.
Since the Seattle Times broke some serious news here, maybe it will take a day or two for the national dailies to weigh in, but it’s a big story. Yes, I’m an airplane nut, but this is supposed to be the plane of the future and Boeing single-handedly keeps our foreign trade imbalance from going all the way through the stratosphere. So this is just big news on eight different levels. This is still easily the most exciting jetliner in a generation, but if Boeing blows this and has to go back to the drawing board, it’s a catastrophic loss. If they get it together and the thing flies, so to speak, airlines and passengers around the world will be happily flying this new plane with the bigger windows, cleaner air, greater roominess, quieter engines, etc., etc., for years to come. It’s either a world-beater or an epic loss for U.S. industry. National dailies need to capture that, even if blogs don’t care.
Sam Howe Verhovek at Slate Magazine reporting from Seattle. Here’s Timothy Egan on the same story:
[A] Seattle Times story that the 787 Dreamliner may not fly this year and could have serious troubles down the road. The implication is that it may not fly at all. … But it’s a big deal. Why? With the auto industry in bankruptcy, people oft say: We don’t make anything in this country anymore. In fact, we do. We make airlines for the world, at some of the best wages in the world. If the Dreamliner, Boeing’s next edition, doesn’t fly, it’s a huge blow to American industrial might, or what’s left of it. And it shows, perhaps, that you can’t build a plane by outsourcing all its parts to factories and engineers around the world, as Boeing has tried to do.
Here’s The Seattle Times story — Boeing 787 may not fly this year.
Note that the Verhovek-Egan exchange is part of a larger look by Slate at news on the web vs. in the newspapers.
I actually just read about this in the NY Times (love their iPhone app), though they didn’t mention the “might not fly ever angle.”
It would be fun (and probably been done) to characterize the news on the web for a period.
Being my field I have watched the Dreamliner’s progress, it is indeed a complete rule-breaker / game-changer. It has also been troubled. Of course.
I also remember the difficulties with the Osprey – game changing involves risk and I have to admire companies that will still take on risk. And see it through despite setbacks.
But that is about the last nice thing I’ll say about Boeing, as your comments are largely correct. The “Systems Integrator” role is something of a crock.
You want to partner with people make things you do not, that is one thing. But Boeing has some contracts out there (and they are not alone) wherein they don’t touch anything but the paper, and the vehicles suffer for it.
Lest anyone think it is just a car you don’t buy, we ARE talking about vehicles that can fall on your head.