Travel Forum / Travel Types / Air Travel / April 2006

Californian aviation comes in for a landing

By Gary Gentile
ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 27, 2006

LONG BEACH, Calif. -- The last Boeing 717 has left the factory.

    The slender airliner, trailed by dozens of the workers who
built it, was rolled out before dawn last week and towed across a
boulevard to Long Beach Airport.

    Its delivery to AirTran Airways next month will mark the end
of seven decades of commercial airplane production in Southern
California.

    At another sprawling complex nearby, thousands of workers
produce the Boeing C-17 military cargo plane. However, no new orders for
the aircraft are in the proposed Defense Department budget.

    If congressional efforts to restore the program fail, the
last of those flying warehouses will be delivered in 2008, and all
airplane production would end in California -- once the center of
commercial and military airplane construction in the nation.

    "More aviation history has been made in Southern California
than in any other place in the world," said Bill Schoneberger, author of
"California Wings," a history of aviation in the state.

    "But we've evolved. The aeronautics industry has moved from
an airplane business into a systems business," he said.

    As corporate consolidation and defense cuts sent airplane
production to Seattle, St. Louis and other regions, Southern California
has moved from metal bending to aerospace research and development.

    Today's workers build satellites, helicopters and unmanned
surveillance drones while developing rockets and military jets that are
made elsewhere.

    Southern California aviation history dates to the early
1900s and features pioneers such as Howard Hughes, Jack Northrop and
Donald Douglas, whose Douglas Aircraft built the DC-1 in 1933, one of
the first commercial passenger planes made.

    The region featured weather that accommodated year-round
flying, drawing companies that produced bombers and fighter planes
during World War II. Later came jetliners such as the DC-8, DC-9, DC-10,
MD-80, MD-90, MD-11 and L-1011 TriStar and space vehicles that included
the Apollo capsule and space shuttle. Boeing acquired the Long Beach
plant in August 1997 when it bought McDonnell-Douglas Corp.

    California's congressional delegation says the high-wing,
four-engine C-17 still has a place in the military's arsenal.

    "We live in a time of uncertainty. No one knows how many
C-17s we will need," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat, said
during a recent tour of the factory in Long Beach that employs 6,000
people.

    The cargo plane has been used since 1991 to airlift heavy
equipment and transport troops.

    To replace the C-17, the Defense Department will consider
acquiring a proposed new tanker aircraft and modernizing another
transport plane, the larger C-5.

    Only 180 more C-17 planes remain on order in California. The
planes cost about $154 million each.

    Ron Marcotte, Boeing vice president of global mobility
systems, said it could take billions of dollars and several years to
restart the program if it shuts down.

    "It's the suppliers and the learning of this work force
which would go away overnight," he said.

    No effort is in the works to save the Boeing 717, a
mid-size, twin-jet passenger plane that struggled to find its market.

    Boeing has sold 155 of the planes since the first delivery
in 1999.

Q---[since the B717 was meant to 'replace' the aging MD80/90 fleet, how
soon can we expect (soon, I hope) the 80/90s to go the way of the B727?
I loved the old 727, but HATE the endlessly long lived DC9/MD80/90]

Many of the unionized workers on the assembly line have transferred to
the C-17 program or been placed in jobs at other aerospace companies.

    The last Boeing 717 is now parked on the airport ramp,
awaiting the start of flight testing. The names of the 800 workers who
built it have been scrawled on the inside skin of its fuselage and
covered by metal paneling.

    Many have worked on airplanes for a quarter century or more.

    Boeing employee Kelly Jenson spent 21 years building
passenger planes before shifting to the C-17, where his fate is
uncertain.

    "We spend a minimum of eight hours a day here, sometimes 10
or 12," Mr. Jenson said. "We're with each other more than we're with our
family. This is our family."