The week of June 26th was very bad to Boeing. After continued reassurance from CEO Jim McNerney that the company’s much anticipated (and previously delayed) Dreamliner 787 would be delivered by the 23rd, Boeing once again came up short. To investors, this was simply one slip-up too many… and a company that cannot fulfill promises is a company worth selling. Making matters worse, the next day, the U.S. Department of Defense terminated the land warfare weapons program headed by BA’s Integrated Defense Systems unit worth an estimated $160 billion. Thinking that there was no possible way to add more grief onto shares of Boeing, Qantas Airways canceled orders for 15 Boeing 787 Dreamliners after being “disappointed” by Boeing’s management.

Shares slid on the day of the initial 787 delay by 6.46%. On the day of the

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The market closed at mixed levels as the NASDAQ and S&P 500 closed up 1.55% and .065% respectively to 1,792.34 and 900.94, while the Dow Jones traded down 0.28% to 8,299.86.  Oil continued to fall today as it dropped $0.57 cents to $68.67 per barrel.  Natural Gas followed suit by dropping $0.10 down to $3.91.  Precious metals increased today as Gold ended $10.10 higher than the beginning of the trading session at $934.40 an ounce and Copper was up 3.17% to $2.28 an ounce.  Yields on the 10-Year increased 0.04% to 3.68% as bond prices fell 15/32 to 95 9/32.

Monsanto Co. [MON: 76.16, -3.14 (-3.96%)] released earnings today of $694 million, or $1.25 per share.  This represents a decrease in profits of 14% of $811 million, or $1.45 per share from the same quarter a year earlier.  Their shares traded down 4.06% today after they announced earnings

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Boeing Co. (BA) forecast the demand for new commercial plane shrinking by almost 1.4% over the next two decades as the global economic crisis takes a toll on air travel.

The Chicago, Illinois-based company now expects 29,000 new planes to be ordered over the next 20 years which is below the 29,400 jets it had projected in 2008. However, it kept the value of new orders unchanged at $3.2 trillion considering price inflation.

"While the commercial aviation industry is facing a significant downturn, it is cyclic and has a long history of declines and upturns," Boeing's vice-president of marketing Randy Tinseth said.

According to reports, a cut in industrywide delivery forecast is extremely rare and has not taken place at least in the last decade. The forecast has been published annually since 1964.

In a separate announcement, the world's largest carrier Delta Air Lines

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* Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) announced that it plans 22,000 new hirings in its US stores this year. Last year the firm added 33,800 jobs, a tally which includes Sam's Clubs, unlike the prior number. The company's annual meeting is scheduled for Friday

* Prudential (NYSE:PRU) shares declined 2.9% following its $1.25 billion share offering was priced at $39 per share

* Aluminum Corp. of China (NYSE:ACH) may revise its Rio Tinto (NYSE:RTP) $19.5 billion deal before the expiration of its June 14 deadline

* Ciena (NASDAQ:CIEN) reported a fiscal second quarter loss of 25 cents a share, a 16 cent miss, as revenues plunged 40.5% to $144 million* Costco's (NASDAQ:COST) reported its May same-store-sales dropped 7%, more than the expected 6.4% decline

* Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) received a Bernstein analyst upgrade due to its capital strength, permitting the firm to take advantage of improving conditions in fixed income, currency and commodity markets

* United Airlines (NASDAQ:UAUA)

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So will a href=”http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/eb8fc516-f2ea-11dd-abe6-0000779fd2ac.html”Airbus/a concede a deal with Ryanair? The sum of 300-400 short-haul jets is no splash in the ocean so I suspect Airbus will (eventually) give Ryanair what it wants as it really has no other choice.br /br /Certainly this is smart business from Ryanair to dangle a nice carrot in front of a starved donkey. Of course there is the usual denialbr / br /blockquoteMichael O’Leary, Ryanair chief executive and key senior colleagues have visited Airbus headquarters in Toulouse to outline their plans, but the European group, the commercial aircraft division of EADS, has told the airline that it is not interested at the prices Ryanair is seeking.br /br /John Leahy, Airbus’s chief commercial officer, said: “We are not in discussions with Ryanair about aircraft. That is on the record. We don’t have plans to enter a sales campaign with Ryanair, which would be very expensive and …

At the end of the third quarter of 2008, Airbus and The Boeing Company (BA) reported a combined total of 7,534 aircraft in backlog and, at that time, they were delivering at an annualized rate of 752 aircraft. On that basis, it would take some 10 years to deliver all the aircraft on order. Of the stated backlog, 458 shipsets were for the Airbus A350 XWB and 895 were for the Boeing 787 -- neither of which is yet in production (787 deliveries may start before the next decade, while A350 deliveries should start by the middle of the next decade).Complicating matters is the ongoing machinists (IAM) strike against Boeing as well as the threat by that company's white-collar engineers and technical employees (who are members of SPEEA) to go on strike early in 2009, which could shut Boeing down entirely.  In addition, there is historical ...

China Cracks the Aircraft Market by: Jack Perkowski December 05, 2008

2008 has been quite a year for the country’s aviation industry. Over the past six months, China has created a giant new aircraft company to make jumbo jetliners in competition with Boeing (BA) and Airbus; it has merged the country’s two largest aircraft makers into one company; it successfully tested its first domestic commercial jetliner; and it announced orders for the new aircraft from a unit of General Electric (GE).

In May, China formed China Commercial Aircraft Co. (CCAC) to make jumbo jetliners, capitalizing the new company with registered capital of 19 billion yuan ($2.7 billion). The state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission alone invested 6 billion yuan, becoming the largest shareholder. Shareholders of the new company also include China Aviation Industry Corporation I (AVIC I) and China Aviation Industry Corporation II (AVIC II), two of China’s main state-owned aircraft makers.

In

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“Airshow China,” the huge aerospace trade show that’s known officially as the “China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition,” ended Sunday in the southern-coast city of Zhuhai. It was the seventh time the event has been held.

But it’s the first time China’s commercial airplane sector has a long-term flight plan to follow.

Roughly $4 billion deals involving 102 aircraft were signed during the six-day event, which was attended by representatives of 600 aviation companies from 35 countries, officials from the Airshow China Organizing Committee told the People’s Daily newspaper.

But the real news was that China has set a timetable for its proposed “jumbo” jet, a passenger aircraft China plans to design and build domestically to compete directly with commercial jetliners built by industry heavyweights Airbus SAS of Europe and The Boeing Co. (BA), the U.S.-based airliner industry pioneer that’s America’s biggest exporter.

China

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European aircraft manufacturer Airbus has officially opened its new assembly plant in China's northern city of Tianjin, Bloomberg reports.

By William Patalon III Executive Editor Money Morning/The Money Map Report The Boeing Co. (BA) doesn’t believe it can win the controversial competition for a $35 billion U.S Air Force tanker contract without a six-month extension, and now has threatened to pull out of the competition altogether. The Chicago-based Boeing said it wants the extension to incorporate what the aerospace giant contends are essentially new requirements calling for a bigger tanker with a larger fuel-carrying capacity. The Pentagon has told the bidders it will grant two months for the bidders to assemble and submit their new proposals, a Boeing official told the Atlanta Business Chronicle. “If we’re unable to secure sufficient time to prepare a competitive proposal, there’s little option for Boeing other than not to submit a bid,” Boeing spokesman Dan Beck told the Georgia-based business journal. This latest development in the ...