Posted for "Ridge Dickey" <ridgedickey@hotmail.com>:

My guess is you're low on the labor cost.   If 300 people are working in production 30 hrs a week, that's 9000 hours per plane, and my guess is a lot of the construction is done in the Phillipines.  If all the work on the airframe is US, that's still a lot of hours to build one ES from scratch.  Wonder what the problem is?  I do hope the certified side makes it.