If we can come up with the right airplanes in the roughly 2019/2020 [period], I personally think the market will wait for us,” CEO James McNerney told analysts during a 2010 earnings call yesterday.
How does it take so long to design the things nowadays ? 9 years ? Did Boeing, with the 737 entering service in 1968, start designing it in 1959 ? Where is all the advantage that billions of dollars of investment in CAD products gives over our grandfathers with drawing boards, crew-cuts, and new Studebakers out in the parking lot ?
And in the meantime, where are Boeing going to get their cashflow from over the next nine years ? 787 delays have already knocked a huge hole in that, now the 737 will be on notice as a past-generation product for almost a decade, which must have an impact on how much you can charge for it.