PAYBACK IS A BOCHE:

Simply stated: Airbus is cooking its own goose (Mike Benbow, 10/16/06, Herald Net)

After billions of dollars in government support over three decades, Airbus finds itself $2 billion in debt and two years behind schedule in producing its new product, the A380 superjumbo jet.

The disaster prompted officials to bring in a new CEO, Christian Streiff, to fix the production problems. He came up with a plan to consolidate the wide-body work in France and the work on narrow-body jets in Germany, not unlike Boeing's scheme of building the big jets in Everett and the smaller ones in Renton.

He called for outsourcing more of the parts, again similar to what Boeing is doing by gathering partners in Italy and Japan to share the workload and the risk for its new jet, the 787 Dreamliner

But wait.

Political officials put the arm on Streiff, appearing to care more about jobs than efficiency. So he quit after only three months.

Enter Louis Gallois, the new chief executive.

He, too, said Airbus needs to cut jobs to climb out of red ink and make it competitive again, but he's insisting he will balance the cuts between participating nations. "We know that if we ask for cuts, we have to ask for balanced efforts between the different countries," Gallois said.

That would be like Boeing working to get approval for its business plan from the mayors of Everett and Lynnwood.

Right now, a ton of cliches are running through my head. Phrases like, "That's no way to run a railroad," or "That dog don't hunt."