Boeing Corporation is likely to file a protest against the Republican presidential candidate John McCain over the loss of the 40 billion dollars US Air Force tanker contract in favour of a joint venture of rivals Northrop Grumman and Airbus.

Boeing supporters in the Congress said that McCain, the Arizona senator and nominee in waiting, deliberately avoided an earlier deal with the Chicago based giant, which would have created thousands of new jobs in the United States.

The company officials and supporters say that especially during this troubled economic times in the US, the Pentagon should have given the tanker contract to an American aircraft maker and not to Airbus. Even if Northrop Grumman is American, the new tankers will be mostly built in Europe.

Air Force officials have met with Boeing executives on Friday in order to discuss and clarify matters regarding the contract awarding process, but they did not seem to convince, as the plane maker representatives declared that they still have “significant concerns”.

"What is clear now is that reports claiming that the Airbus offering won by a wide margin could not be more inaccurate," said Mark McGraw, Boeing vice president and program manager of the KC-767 tanker.

"Our plan now is to work through the weekend to come to a decision on our course of action early next week," McGraw also said. "It will be a very rigorous and deliberative process to ensure we're balancing the needs of the warfighter with our desire to be treated fairly."

According to The Seattle Times, Boeing is seriously considering filing a protest. If the contestation will be filed within 10 days from the official announce of the contract, the process would be suspended as the Government Accountability Office is forced to review the complaint and rule weather it is valid or not. This means Boeing still has five days to file the protest in order to have a chance to change the faith of the contract.