"At first Airbus dismissed the 787 as a copy of one of their planes. Then they said they would improve that plane. But now Airbus knows that a medium-size, efficient new airplane like the 787 is where there will be a big market. So they had to respond to us."

—Harry Stonecipher, Boeing president and CEO, in the Feb. 14 issue of Time

"We don't want production robots. We want the creative ideas of the mechanics."

—Mary Dowell, 777 Final Assembly superintendent for Commercial Airplanes, in the Feb. 14 issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology. Dowell was discussing a training/evaluation day in which shop-floor personnel would walk through proposed ideas on streamlining the 777 assembly process and provide input on the procedure.

"Clearly, I'm not going to fly on something that is unsafe. ... I'm a person who won't even get on a roller coaster at an amusement park because they scare me."

—Eileen Collins, commander of STS-114 aboard Space Shuttle Discovery, expressing her belief that the spacecraft is safe, in the Feb. 11 issue of Florida Today