Higher than forecast sales surprise aerospace group
The U.S.

The U.S. civil aviation and space programs have developed what Aerospace Industries Association president and CEO John Douglass calls “a creeping crisis,” where “almost every day some kind of relatively bad news has come in, despite what I consider to be an aggressive effort by our government to fix the security problems.”

Nevertheless, he said, aerospace industry sales for 2002 “actually surprised us” because the preliminary final tally of $148.2 billion was $4 billion higher than had been predicted at the end of 2001. Still, that was $5 billion lower than the $153.1 billion in aerospace industry sales for 2001.