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Senior industry bankers are on McNerney’s side, however. “It’s a tale of two cities at the moment — you have the airline in pain, and the manufacturers with overstuffed order books. But the demand you can see from India, China, Russia, the Middle East and other emerging economies means that there will still be growth in commercial aerospace,” said Michael Richter, co-head of aerospace and defence banking at Lazard.

“China is building 97 new airports to open by 2020. It will take a lot of new aircraft to fill them up,” said Paul Edwards at Jefferies International, the investment bank.

Part of the drop in Boeing’s shares can be explained by the problems with its new airliner, the 787. The mid-sized jet, which promises to cut fuel use by 20% thanks to new engines and the use of lightweight composite materials, is running at least 18 months late. Japan’s All Nippon Airways should have received the first 787 in May, but will now not get it until the final quarter of next year.

Boeing adopted a radical production method for the new plane, outsourcing key components to third parties. Japanese and Italian groups are building large chunks of the 787 and shipping them to Seattle for final assembly.

McNerney said Boeing would not abandon outsourcing for future models. “It’s the right strategy, but we bit off more than we could easily chew. I think we drew the line in the wrong place in a couple of areas, and didn’t manage our supply chain as well as we could have.

“The implication is that we need to share systems with our suppliers, and learn to operate across corporate boundaries. That’s the new world we’re looking at,” he said.

While the 787 represents the state of the art, McNerney believes there are more efficiencies to come, from engine makers and in the use of composites.

“We’re just at the beginning of the curve with composites. We see big leaps in both strength and weight that will drive savings for years to come.”

Not that Boeing is finding the big leaps that easily. McNerney confirmed the company was unlikely to replace its best-selling 737 model until the second half of the next decade, confounding industry expectations.

Airlines had demanded another 15% cut in operating costs over and above the 787 efficiencies, something that Boeing had concluded it could not easily deliver.

“We never set a date, but I think it’s fair to say that it will be closer to the end of the next decade,” said McNerney.

“It’s very hard for us to beat the current planes by a significant amount. It’s not about our desire to do it — we want to do it. It’s a technical issue.”

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