BOEING

To corporate tycoons like Philip Condit, the former Boeing CEO who pushed Congress for the necessary trade agreements to sell taxpayer-subsidized goods abroad, free trade ideology is not a set of principles to hold in the heart, but a tactical maneuver to be deployed--or withdrawn--as the circumstances require for the particular ends sought.

Last year, Air Force officials concluded that Boeing had illegally acquired thousands of pages of proprietary Lockheed documents from former Lockheed managers it hired in the 1990s, giving Boeing an unfair advantage by helping it calculate the amount bid by its rival in a major rocket competition.

When the Pentagon awarded Boeing the contract in 2002, the only competitor was the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company, best known as the parent company of Airbus--and it was a long shot at best.

Boeing developed FlyThru, a high-performance CAD visualization system.

The WGS is a key military satellite communications, or MILSATCOM, program being weaved into a Boeing integrated battlespace where real-time information is quickly and simultaneously made accessible to platforms, forces and commanders on the ground, at sea and in the air.

According to Tim Scoville, Boeing Commercial Aircraft Group's Product Development Div., the highly politicized casting factor appears to finally be trotting off into the sunset.

For the Fortune 500 CEOs and others of the newly rich, the latest answer is--an entire Boeing airliner converted to your personal use.

Boeing said the milestone and the pace at which it was reached reflect the accelerating growth in the world's largest commercial aviation market.

Our long-standing industrial relationship in this market has been mutually beneficial, fuelling significant growth in Boeing's business, the US economy, and the Chinese aviation industry," said Ihssane Mounir, senior vice president of Commercial Sales & Marketing of The Boeing Company.