"The aerospace business, at the level occupied by Airbus and Boeing, is mind-bogglingly complex, "
I worked in the aerospace business for eight years, and I never heard it referred to as "mind bogglingly complex." On the other hand, I can see how it could be made to be mind bogglingly complex, if one's goal was to make it so.
Airbus is like that saying: An elephant is a horse designed by committee.
To a journalist or a liberal (high degree of overlap in this country), anything that requires math harder than balancing their checkbook is "mind-bogglingly complex".