An interesting thought.....
I've spent the last four months working at board level at a major airline (client confidentiality forbids me from saying who....) and one of their directors gave me a story about the Chronic Snoozer that he had heard from someone in Boeing.....
Apparently, Boeing were SERIOUSLY concerned about the effect that the (at the time) possible formal launch of A380 would have on their share price. So they came up with CS as a way of building some confidence amongst the red-braced dimwits on Wall St that they hadn't screwed up in abandoning 747-XXX where XXX is something pretty huge and heavy. Idea being - few days of good press ("Aren't Boeing just fab?", "Boeing lead the way" etc etc) to rain on Airbus's parade and keep the market boys happy. Then, Boeing could quietly drop the whole thing.
The only fly in this ointment was the airlines, amongst whom there is a small but vocal number who actually WANT the thing, and won't let it die. And of course, Boeing wouldn't dream about offering discounts on possible CS sales if you were to sign up for a 777 or three now..... its payback time.
The trouble with something that cruises at M0.98 is that it will go supersonic if the air changes temperature, or the crew are a bit heavy handed at top of climb..... and going from M0.98 to M1.01 does strange things to the airflows...
I'd bet there are engineers at Boeing just praying this thing will die..... shades of 2707 all over again.
TA