So Airbus engineering is fully occupied with the A380 and A400 and Boeing has its hands free because the 787 and 747-8 are ready? And you just went along?
Until recently here (
http://oea.larc.nasa.gov/PAIS/Concep...omposites.html) you could find an interesting illustrated article and photos of NASA Langley proudly doing developping and testing a ultimate load test on a fuel scale composite wingbox. The text proudly mentioned:
The Stitched-RFI Composite Wing Program was successfully completed with ground testing of a 42-ft-long wing box. The box was tested in the Langley Structures and Materials Laboratory under the leadership of Dawn Jegley in 2000, and the box failed at 97 percent of design ultimate load (145-percent design limit load). Boeing is seriously considering using this technology in the next generation of aircraft.
Recently NASA pulled the page from its website archive, too many hits from the wrong continent. They did a clean up, rewriting history. You won't find the topic in "How Boeing Defied the Airbus Challenge" by Mohan R. Pandey either.