Boeing's delay of its 787 launch should hardly be a surprise. Having put back the maiden flight to November-December, meeting the May delivery date for the first Dreamliner was always going to be a challenge.
I was told two weeks ago that it would take a team of test pilots flying round the clock to log sufficent time in the air for the aircraft to be certified within a record time of five months. A further delay in production was always going to scupper that.
But why the insistence until the last minute that everything would be on time when it must have been clear inside the company that it would not?
And it's good to see an over-used management technique compromised - that of blind insistence on a deadline that is unmeetable - rather than anything else.