Vygg wrote

"The decision to get out of the
commercial tilt-rotor was primarily a Bell decision - no market for the

aircraft. All of the tilt-rotor sales are for military, not an
ancillary
government/military sale from a commercial product. Tilt-rotor has been

a military program from the beginning - not a commercial program with
military applicability."

Did you mean to write a Boeing or McDonnell decision? Bell in the end
was better off without Boeing as a partner on the 609, but at the time
BOEINGS decision to drop out almost killed the program. The engineers
at Boeing Vertol are some of the best, but their managers had no
concept on how to run a commericial aircraft program.

A Boeing Vertol management mentality of spending aircraft development
money on "engineering processes" instead of engineering design resulted
in Boeing claiming that they had completed 90% of all the 609
engineering. When Bell started opening files of what were supposed to
be stress analysis, what they found were one sentence notes stating
that the formal analysis would be completed at a later date. When all
Boeing enginnering was reviewed, it turned out they had only completed
about 40% of what they claimed. They had spent however over 100% of
what they were budgeted.

This is why Boeing Vertol managers were elated when presented the
opportunity to drop out of the 609 program. The grunt engineers
however were devastated. Many key engineers ended up leaving Philly
for Texas as a result

Take care,

CTR