safetypee, many thanks for that. .... many, many thanks.
On the difference between craftsmen and riveting, and significantly more automated, methods of aircraft manufacturing:
Suppose one were on a commission, properly charged and authorized, asked to advise the receiver for Boeing company - which (hypothetically) has been put into receivership resulting from otherwise intractable problems stemming from the criminal matter in Texas, governance deficiencies overall, and others - about leveraging the existing company into one that is at least as automated in manufacturing as Toulouse (if not more so). At what point in time should Boeing have made the change to automated methods in the past? Is it even meaningful to conceive of such a transformation occuring at all in light of what's gone wrong to date?
Another question - after the Second World War, and the emergence of the Chicago Convention of 1944 and (soon after) ICAO, Boeing had no massive competitor in Toulouse, obviously. Boeing contributed quite significantly to the development, growth, and technological advance of the global civil aviation sector for decades -- not the only airframer to do so, of course, but the most dominant. The point isn't about eliciting sympathy for poor Boeing; no. The question is, doesn't Toulouse's achievement owe a great deal to Boeing's heavy lifting of aircraft manufacturing for several decades? Boeing did so much to create the industry which Airbus then arose to serve in some ways better than Boeing had served it and was serving it - correct? Does that not give some impetus, in other words some validity, to the idea that wrong-doers at Boeing deserve to be held accountable as completely as feasible, but the corporate entity is worth redeeming?
(I mean, this thread has opened up topically, but if the above is too, too pedantic, apologies here in advance.)