About that small-sized Japanese-made jet...

...we promised to market for you? You know, the 70-seater we said we would sell for you even though, as our suppliers, you should really not be trying to muscle in on our action? We have been very flexible, we thought. We have been overlooking your plans to offer your own finished products to retail customers because having you as our suppliers provides incentives to your semi-national carriers to choose our wide bodied planes over those of rivals.

Well, we have some potentially bad news for the deal:

Mike Bair's "remarkable" speech
Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Mike Bair, former 787 boss, gave a pretty blunt talk about 787 suppliers on Wednesday to a group in Everett. I was unable to attend, but here is my report, tho late, on what he had to say.

By James Wallace
P-I aerospace reporter

In unusually blunt language for a top executive of The Boeing Co., Mike Bair, who was recently replaced as head of the troubled 787 program, said some suppliers have let the company down.

"Some of these guys we won't use again," Bair said Wednesday in a speech to the Snohomish County Economic Development Council.

He did not name names.

Did Bair mean to include Boeing's top-tier partners in the U.S., Italy and Japan that are responsible for manufacturing the composite wings and fuselage sections of the new jet?

"Yes, we said we would be willing to put our sales forces at your disposal. But that was before we acknowledged the serious problems in our relationship. Frankly, even as the promise was being made to you, the fun was already fading."


What, what is that I hear? Could it be the sound of one Japanese government-industry vanity project's underpinnings cracking? Or with the loss of Boeing's business, will Japan's aeronautics industry double down, investing everything in the MRJ?