Aviation experts expressed surprise at the announcement of a planned lawsuit, saying it may be premature before the National Transportation Safety Board completes its investigation, which could take more than a year. “This is one of the more unusual things I’ve heard,” said Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst with Teal Group Corp., a Virginia research firm. “You don’t hear of much success with cases like these, particularly involving an aircraft with such a stellar safety record.”

Boeing said on Monday it can move “really fast” to get the Dreamliner back into the skies once the FAA approves the fix. But the FAA faces unusually tough obstacles in approving it for flight – one of them brought on by the agency’s own boss. LaHood promised early in the crisis that the Dreamliner would not resume flying until regulators were “1,000 percent sure” of its safety. As no aircraft is 100 percent safe “it is going to be a challenge for the FAA to dial back from some of the overheated rhetoric,” said Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst at the Teal Group in Virginia. Aboulafia estimated it would take at least four months for the 787 to be cleared to fly if the FAA approves flight tests soon. If flight testing approval takes longer, it could take 6-9 months before the 787 is back in the air.

To understand why, you need to go back to 1997, when Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas. Technically, Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas. But, as Richard Aboulafia, a noted industry analyst with the Teal Group, told me, "McDonnell Douglas in effect acquired Boeing with Boeing's money." McDonnell Douglas executives became key players in the new company, and the McDonnell Douglas culture, averse to risk and obsessed with cost-cutting, weakened Boeing's historical commitment to making big investments in new products. Aboulafia says, "After the merger, there was a real battle over the future of the company, between the engineers and the finance and sales guys." The nerds may have been running the show in Silicon Valley, but at Boeing they were increasingly marginalized by the bean counters.

Electrical problems and fuel leaks have plagued the new Boeing plane model recently. On Monday, an empty Japan Airlines 787 in Boston caught fire. On Tuesday, a fuel leak forced a different Japan Airlines 787 to cancel takeoff and return to the gate before ultimately completing its trip to Tokyo. "We're getting to a tipping point, where they go from needing to rectify problems to doing major damage control to the image of the company and the plane," said Richard Aboulafia, a defense and aerospace analyst with Teal Group, a consulting firm based in Fairfax, Va. "While they delivered a large and unexpected number of 787s last year, it's possible that they should have instead focused on identifying glitches and flaws, rather than pushing ahead with volume production."

Amid continuing public anger about corporate "fat cat" lifestyles, a fresh recognition of the industry's usefulness would bring welcome relief, said Richard Aboulafia, an aviation analyst at the Teal Group in Fairfax, Virginia. "Business aircraft have been hit harder by the economic crisis than any other aerospace market," Mr. Aboulafia said. "After unprecedented growth, the market fell by 24.3 percent in value of deliveries" from 2008 to 2009. "The good news is that the market has stopped falling," he said in a Teal Group market review. "The bad news is that this is a three-year downturn. We're halfway through a very difficult bust cycle."

Teal foresees no resumption of growth in deliveries until 2012, he said, after which it expects a six-year recovery period of growth averaging 10 percent per year. At that rate, the peak 2008 delivery levels would not be reached again until 2016-17. Last year, Teal's forecast for 2009 to 2018 was for delivery of 9,300 business jets valued at $153.7 billion. This year, it is projecting 10,285 business jet deliveries in the 10 years to 2019, at a current dollar value of $184.1 billion. To that total should be added 649 large business jetliners — corporate versions of regional jets or of the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 families, worth $36.4 billion; and 3,041 turboprops valued at $13.2 billion. That compares with 7,889 business jets worth $143.4 billion in 2010 dollar values that were delivered in the 10 years ending in 2009.

In contrast with previous cycles, Mr. Aboulafia pointed to an "unprecedented bifurcation" in the market, with 2009 deliveries of jets that cost $25 million or more — the top half of the market in value terms — falling 4.1 percent from 2008, while demand for less expensive planes dropped 42.8 percent. The slump at the less expensive end of the market reflected a sharp drop in demand for fractional ownership — a form of time-share program — and probably also the effect of the credit freeze on all but the wealthiest buyers, he said.