With Scott Carson's exit, Boeing Commercial Airplanes is largely purged of the names most outsiders would associate with the troubled development of the 787. Programme manager Mike Bair went in late 2007. Scott Strode, who served as vice-president of programme development, left in 2008 for a post in Wichita. Boeing chiefs Harry Stonecipher and Alan Mullaly started the programme and left in 2005 and 2006.
As head of the business unit behind the 787 - and the less-troubled but still worrying 747-8 - Carson may well have failed to keep BCA on track. With a different leader, the 787 may have come through on time.
But it's worth noting that in Boeing chief Jim McNerney's musings on Carson's departure and the future of 787 there was no reflection on the 8 July 2007 debut - 7-8-07 in American dating convention - that turned out to have been the roll-out not of an aircraft but of a 787-shaped shell. That literally hollow achievement perfectly symbolises the 787 problem, of a programme driven by sales and marketing demands rather than engineering progress.
McNerney detailed what he "would have done differently", but doesn't say why he didn't steer Carson in those directions. Maybe Carson wasn't for steering, and maybe nobody could have turned the programme around. Either way, the buck really stops on McNerney's desk.
Source: Flight International
