(Kittyhawk, N.C.) The Boeing Co. will return to the basics of aircraft design after a series of accidents involving jet-powered planes.
“We’ve learned our lesson. It’s time we returned to our aircraft roots and start from scratch,” CEO Dave Calhoun said. “We’ve even come back to the place where flight all started — Kittyhawk — and though the Wright Brothers can’t be with us in body, we know they are with us in spirt.
“Shareholders were excited to learn that we wouldn’t be making planes that could lose doors in mid-flight, let alone wheels,” Calhoun continued. “They also understand that our profit margins are probably going to be much lower for a while too, but they believe that is better than 10,000 new lawsuits a day.”
Calhoun said it wasn’t easy getting ahold of the first few airplane designs because they are all archived, but the hardest part, he noted, was retooling the company’s factories to add more flight fabric for the wings and the aircraft body.
“We have had to get that made special, and let me just tell you, it wasn’t easy,” Calhoun said.
He refused to say if Boeing was obtaining the flight fabric from China after reports said Beijing had cornered the market already.
