Posted 3/10/2008 05:03:00 PM by Douglas

Here's a shocker: Boeing is going to appeal the loss of the $40 Billion tanker deal to Airbus.

The Boeing Company said Monday that it would seek to overturn the award to rival manufacturers of a multibillion-dollar contract to build aerial refueling aircraft.

“Our team has taken a very close look at the tanker decision and found serious flaws in the process that we believe warrant appeal,” Jim McNerney, Boeing’s chairman, president and chief executive, said in a statement on the airplane giant’s Web site. “This is an extraordinary step rarely taken by our company, and one we take very seriously.”

The company said it would file a formal protest on Tuesday asking the Government Accountability Office to review the Air Force’s decision to award the tanker contract to a team of Northrop Grumman and the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company.

Boeing had been favored to win the $35 billion contract — which could eventually be worth far more — so its defeat to the Northrop Grumman-EADS team was a stinging blow not just to Boeing’s corporate pride but its long-range outlook as well. So its announcement that it will appeal was not that unexpected.

When all the dust clears from this, I bet they get it. But this is big message for them to get their act together.