Hopscotching through Europe

We’re sometimes accused of having a warped sense of humor (guilty) that occasionally gets us in trouble with readers. But we simply can’t help ourselves.

We found something in the Boeing tanker protest that we could not help but chuckle at. Boeing has made a real issue over the inexperience of Northrop Grumman and EADS compared with Boeing on building tankers. Boeing also has criticized the production model of Northrop/EADS. The Airbus A330-200 on which the Northrop KC-30 is based in built in England, Spain, Germany and France and the fuselage components will be shipped to Alabama for assembly. (Not unlike the 787 and KC-767 production models, but that’s neither here nor there).

In the protest, Boeing had this gem:

“…The Northrop/EADS…production process…will hopscotch through Europe to produce some planes….”

Who says Boeing doesn’t have a corporate sense of humor?

Separately, Northrop said in a conference call that 50% of the revenue from the tanker will make its way to EADS, which then has to pay its suppliers. We took a stab at assessing this figure on our corporate website in a report. It looks like we were pretty close in our assessment.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *