Originally Posted by
pax britanica
I think it was an extract from a book about a Boeing employee back in the sixties who reported back to Seattle after a trip to Uk to see the trident and VC10 developments. He said he was pretty confident the 727/707 were better than the Uk equivalents but what really convinced him was the state of the production facilities used in UK , ancient lacking in any degree of investment and in his eyes quite unable to meet even modest demands so that whatever the final performance and economy figures turned out to be Boeing would still come out ahead because our usual parsimonious approach and unwillingness to address risk investment (which building airliners certainly is) meant we would never be able to keep up.
Back when the 757 was being launched, the British government wanted Boeing have the wing built in the UK in return for BA being the launch customer. Boeing sharpened their pencils and determined it would increase the per-aircraft cost by $1 million USD compared to doing the wing in-house (this at a time when Boeing was selling 757s for ~$20 million USD). Boeing said thanks, but no thanks...