You guys keep me greatly amused during my down times!
I have to play devil's advocate on this one;
aviate1138,
Boeing is not reinventing the wheel, nor copying Airbus by shipping 7E7 subassemblies by air. In fact, this was pioneered by Aero-Spacelines on Boeing aircraft in 1962.Boeing contributed to the engineering effort. Airbus procured some of the Super Guppys for A300 production in the 70's. Wonder where they got the idea for the Beluga?
747FOCAL,
you are correct in stating that the JAL 74 crash in which the tail was damaged as a result of the aft pressure bulkhead failure. Do you know the events that led to that? It was a faulty repair by BOEING that did not conform to the structural repair manual guidelines, AC4313, or any standard, accepted repair criteria.