They told fellow board members that new plane’s development costs had to be no more than 40 percent of what Boeing had spent on its wildly successful predecessor, the 777. What’s more, they wanted assembly costs held to 60 percent of what it took to build each 777. Considering that it had been nearly a decade since the earlier plane’s introduction, this was an aggressively low target. The only way to meet it would be to outsource pieces of the plane, as McDonnell Douglas had done, to its detriment.
