787 Line 2 Aftermath

Update, Oct. 30: We’ll be posting our postmortem Monday, Nov. 2.

Oct. 29, 2009, (c) Leeham News: This isn’t the postmortem we’re working on but there is a lot of traffic to this site today, obviously looking for some thoughts, so here are a few rapid-fire ones:

• Boeing says it didn’t go into the labor negotiations with a preconceived decision. But we think if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. We always felt Line 2 was Charleston’s to “lose,” so to speak, and that Everett was a very, very long shot.
• But at the same time, the IAM asked for stuff that just had no chance of being accepted. Some of this originated with the IAM national leadership that had nothing to do with the needs of the IAM local. We’ll talk about this more in our post mortem.
• The successor airplanes to the 737 and 777, with decision timelines we estimate to be in the 2013-15 period, will be Puget Sound’s Rubicon. With the IAM and SPEEA contracts coming up in 2012, the outcome of these will dictate with finality where the successor airplanes will be. We predicted in April that these will not be in Puget Sound. We also predicted in April Line 2 would be in Charleston.
• Washington State and labor have to decide what they are willing to do between now and 2012-15 to try and keep the successor airplanes. We predict they will all dither away these opportunities through inertia (on the part of the politicians) and resentment (on the part of labor).

This will have to tide readers over until we can fully do our postmortem.