The era of transport aircraft production in California, an enterprise that has been a vital part of the state’s economy since the 1920s, may end in less than two years.

Aero Club members in August visited Boeing’s Long Beach production plant for the Air Force C-17 airlifter to see the last fixed-wing assembly line left in the state and America’s only remaining large military aircraft production line. They learned from the plant’s general manager that unless Congress within the coming weeks votes to extend that production program, Boeing will have to shut down the program and lay off thousands of employees.

 

Jean Chamberlin, Boeing vice president in charge of the C-17 program and chief of the Long Beach factory complex, told a group of 50 ACSC members that without a congressional vote to include more C-17s in the upcoming Fiscal Year 2010 defense budget, the last C-17 will roll out of the plant in July, 2011. The fiscal year is scheduled to begin Oct. 1, and normally Congress tries to complete its budget work and have a bill ready for the president’s signature by Sept. 30.

 

Shutdown Would Affect Firms in 44 States

Chamberlin told the Aero Club visitors that if the C-17 program receives no more production orders, she will have to direct the more than 650 suppliers located in 44 states to begin phasing out their C-17 work this fall. Those companies presently employ more than 30,000 workers directly connected to the C-17 program, she said. The economic impact of the subcontractors’ C-17 work at all their locations totals about $5.8 billion annually.

The largest blow to employment at any one location will fall upon the Boeing facility at Long Beach, where nearly 6,000 people presently work on the C-17. The company estimates that throughout California, 14,000 jobs will be lost if the program is canceled. There are no other U.S. aircraft production programs that could feasibly make use of the Long Beach assembly plant, and industry analysts believe the facility would likely be sold for non-aircraft use.

The Long Beach plant was originally built by McDonnell Douglas, years before its acquisition by Boeing. McDonnell Douglas developed the C-17 after winning an Air Force airlift design competition, flying the first of those aircraft in 1991. By this year, 238 aircraft had been ordered and 209 delivered to the USAF and overseas customers including the U.K., Australia, Canada, NATO and Qatar.

In August Boeing began running full-page advertisements in selected newspapers to call attention to the importance of continuing C-17 production. In Washington, several members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives said they support additional orders, but the key committees that will have the final say on the defense budget were on their annual summer recess and their position isn’t yet known.

 

Must the U.S. Military Depend on Foreign Contractors?

Also unknown is how many legislators may know, or care, about the rapidly disappearing part of the American industrial base that military aircraft production represents. If the C-17 program ends in 2011, and the projected end of Lockheed Martin’s C-130J production takes place in 2015, for the first time in history foreign nations would be the only source of large military aircraft.

And at that point, only two production lines will remain in the United States for fixed-wing military or commercial aircraft. Those will be at the Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter factory in Fort Worth and the Boeing commercial aircraft plant in Seattle.