PARIS/TOKYO -- At the Paris Air Show in June 2007, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries unveiled a sleek, gleaming silver mock-up of an aircraft it hoped would conquer the world's regional jet market. Twelve years and billions of dollars in overruns later, the Japanese conglomerate was back in Le Bourget this week, rebooting a program that was billed as the fulfillment of a national and corporate dream but instead became an investor nightmare.
The pavilion of subsidiary Mitsubishi Aircraft attracted crowds of journalists and aviation enthusiasts, eager to check out the interior of the redesigned and renamed Mitsubishi Regional Jet -- now the SpaceJet -- and hear how executives plan to rise above the design flaws and other setbacks that delayed deliveries five times.
