Yet another 787 delay puts Boeing's credibility at risk

0 Comments | USA TODAY, June, 2009 | by Dan Reed

Boeing calls its much-anticipated new 787 the Dreamliner, but the hot-selling, revolutionary jet looks more like a public relations nightmare after Tuesday's decision to delay the first flight for the fifth time.

The company's shares fell 6.5% to $43.87 Tuesday after Boeing said a design weakness discovered recently will force an indefinite delay of the first flight while engineers evaluate and test possible fixes.

The stock had been rising for most of the past month as investors bid up the price, encouraged by top Boeing executives' repeated vows that the plane would fly by next Tuesday, the last day of the second quarter.

Those expectations were dashed on a conference call Tuesday morning when Scott Carson, head of Boeing's Commercial Airplanes...