Airbus details Watchtower Committee

We previously wrote a story for Commercial Aviation Online about Boeing Capital Corp.’s War Room methodology in tracking the “funding gap” for 2009 deliveries. We posted that story on this website at this link.

We followed that CAO story up with a profile of the Airbus BCC equivalent, the Watchtower Committee. Here is that story:

Boeing cuts production

Boeing just announced it is cutting production of the 777 from seven to five a month and delaying plans to increase rates on the 767 and 747, effective next year, it was announced today. No rate adjustment is planned for the 737 at this time. The rate for the 737 is 31 a month.

The decision comes a month before BCA President Scott Carson previously said it would.

The full press release is here.

Washington State lags competitively

Update, 3:25 PM: Gov. Gregoire announced the new aerospace council, as reported by the mainstream media, and she also announced a plan to increase aerospace training. But her plan calls for coordinating community college aerospace training programs and the aerospace programs of the senior colleges.

All well and good, but this misses the mark. We’ll be talking about this at our speech to the Economic Development Council of Snohomish County on April 22.

Also missing the mark: Gregoire made the point several times about building airplanes in Washington vs. other states. Washington officials and all the stakeholders, including the unions, need to convince Boeing to bring work back to Washington from other countries and commit future work for future airplane programs right here in Washington. Nothing was said about this.

Update, 1:55PM: The Associated Press reports, via The Seattle Post Intelligencer, that the Governor is going to announce the establishment of an aerospace commission–one of the recommendations of the Deloitte report. The AP said it got a copy of the report through a Public Records request. The report, of course, was here first. Andrea James of The P-I is updating her blog with new information. It may be linked here. Dominic Gates of The Seattle Times has this report in advance of the Governor’s press conference.

Update, 1:45 PM: Gov. Gregoire will hold a press conference at 2:45 PM PDT April 9 to discuss this study. It will be carried live by the Washington State TVW public information network, which also streams on the Internet. The link to the main TV page is here; you’ll have to scroll to the event itself.

Update, 9:30 AM: We were just told by a member of the Washington State Legislature who was briefed on this report that no copies were going to be distributed to the Legislature:

We had the briefing from Deloitte on Monday night and the Gov. was briefed on Tuesday morning. We were told we could not have copies and the presentation Powerpoint would be erased because circulation would be “devastating” to the state’s competitive posture.  From my reading of the materials, it was fairly common sense and not necessarily profound on issues we have known for quite sometime, at least from an insider’s perspective.

We find the plan to keep this report from the Legislature, which would be asked to make any changes to laws and compensation, to be very troubling. It’s also very stupid. Anytime someone tries to keep key documents from key stakeholders and decision-makers, someone is going to leak it. There is no greater resource than a pissed off one.

Additional Note: We are making a speech April 22 on the topic of retaining the anticipated second 787 production line in Washington before the Economic Development Council of Snohomish County and are addressing some of the issues in this report.

Original Post:

A new study by Deloitte performed for the Economic Development Council of Snohomish County (where Boeing’s Everett wide-body plant is located) concludes that Washington State is uncompetitive in attracting new aerospace business.

The report, which has not been released publicly and is to be used by the Governor to make a case for changes in state laws to ease business costs for Boeing and other firms, was obtained by us.

The Aerospace Industry Competitive Study may be downloaded. It is a 38 page PDF file.

Among the conclusions: