Of course that should read soul destroying, although I did use quite a lot of sole leather walking around Tolouse, Hamburg and Bremen whilst Airbus created tons of paperwork as a way of avoiding designing or building anything.
From my experience the reason that it took so long and cost so much was the fact that the Customers could a) not agree what they wanted and b) not stop interfering and let Airbus get on with it!....... SOPs!
I really enjoyed working with AIrbus Military.. it was the Customer-side that was the frustration!