The Boeing Company (NYSE: BA) has announced its fourth delay in delivering its first of nearly 900 unit order backlog of its 787 Dreamliner from the original May 2008 to the current first quarter 2010. After parts problems and an eight week machinists strike, this does not come as a surprise but many customers are probably wondering whether there will be more delays in the future. Unfortunately, it is unclear whether Boeing has learned enough from these delays to keep them from happening in the future.

If a study by Boeing competitor, Airbus, is to be believed, the 787 has been plagued by a wide range of management problems. The study suggests that when Boeing outsourced a significant portion of the 787's design and assembly integration, it failed in overseeing those partners. Airbus's study suggests that Boeing should have known about the following six problems:

• Its partners' factory workers lacked the skill to do their jobs - The study claims that these workers were "low-wage, trained-on-the-job workers that had no previous aerospace experience."
• Some of its partners lacked design staff - The study claims that one of its partners, Vought, "had no engineering department when selected" by Boeing.
• Some of its suppliers could not produce enough parts - The study claims there was "insufficient supply of frame, clips brackets and floor beams."

John F. Kennedy International Airport has long been a historic gateway to the United States, but in today's world, Alan Levin of USA Today called a recent visit "more like a dysfunctional parking lot."

Levin couldn't be closer to the truth. I live in Queens, New York, where not only JFK Airport resides but also LaGuardia International Airport on the northern side of the county. Both airports could be classified as "dysfunctional" during a slow day. Through May this year, about four in ten flights at JFK, LaGuardia and Newark were at least 15 minutes late, according to the federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics. JFK is on pace to handle 460,000 flights this year alone, 33% more than the turn of the century - and that's only seven years ago.

There have been rumors circulating around the blogosphere, which have reached the Street that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) might have to delay the release of the iPhone from June to October and the Leopard operating system, already delayed to October, delayed again until January. Apple's PR department has reiterated to the mongers that all is still on schedule.

Okay, great, but then this begs the question, "What if?'" What if Apple did have to delay the launch of these products, especially the iPhone? The reasons would have to be known as they would ascertain the ultimate and proper release date. Is it component sourcing that is an issue? Is it a software-quality issue? Did the beta-testing units developed a few glitches? The reasons would be put into one of two camps: Can Apple control the issue, or is the issue out of Apple's control?

If the iPhone is delayed, what happens to the stock short-term and to the earnings model? The stock would take a hit to be sure, as it did today when the rumors reached traders, before the retraction. Usually this is a situation of shoot first, ask questions later and indeed AAPL plunged to $103.42 (down 2.7%) today on the news.

Update: The iPhone release date of June 29 has been confirmed as of June 3, 2007.

If you invest in turn around situations, you will have spent a lot of time focused on airline stocks during the last five years.

When interviewing airline executives, they universally say the same thing: the airline industry is different than other industries, as you grow there is point at which your costs substantially increase as a percent of sales. The old concept of economies of scale does not work the same way in the airline industry.

This appears to be happening at JetBlue Airways Corporation (NASDAQ: JBLU). When asking airline executives about JetBlue as a competitor, many said that at some point its costs are going to have to go up.

The JetBlue irony is that the start-up airline is having trouble when legacy airlines are actually raising prices. There is no price war going on.

What are the reasons cited for JetBlue's blues? Regulation, as pilots need to follow federally established rest rules; poor communications -- a big expense; failed reservation systems -- very expensive; employees are in locations where they are unable to provide a helping hand -- more expenses.

JetBlue appears to have reached a size where it needs massive infrastructure investment. It will be interesting to hear if management comes clean on how much all the investments will cost.

The airline had scheduled 600 flights for Presidents Day, more than the 550 to 575 flights on a typical Monday. So far, 139 flights have been canceled.

Taiwan PC makers report new delays in the RTM (release to manufacturing) version of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)'s Vista, which they were supposed to get this week. Manufacturers are now being told it will be at least mid-November before that release. The reason: more bugs were found that could paralyze an upgrade to a Vista-capable Windows XP OS, according to a story in today's DigiTimes Systems.

The RTM build 5824 was scheduled for release this week, after the number of bugs found in the Windows Vista Release Candidate 2 (RC2) version dropped from 1,450 to around 500, according to sources quoted in the DigiTimes story, but additional bugs that could paralyze an upgraded Vista-capable Windows XP OS halted those plans. The new build is now RTM build 5840 and Microsoft promised to continue to test the new version until its release in November.

Even though Microsoft alerted PC makers to the delay, it assured them that it still planned to launch the business-use and home-use Vista OS by November 2006 and January 2007, respectively.

Now in addition to fears that Vista may block your security programs from being fully functional, you may find that an upgrade locks up your Vista-capable Windows XP OS. You may not want to jump to upgrade until you're sure all these kinks have been worked out.