Sad news here in Long Beach as Boeing announces closure of C-17A production in 2015

C-17A (P-218) 10-0218 rotates from Rwy 30 at Long Beach Airport (LGB/KLGB) on September 6, 2012 as it departs on a pre-delivery test flight.

 

(Photo by Michael Carter)

The C-17 Globemaster III plant, California’s last remaining aircraft manufacturing facility, will shutter in two years, affecting 2,200 Boeing Co. employees based in Long Beach and Huntington Beach and thousands of workers and suppliers nationwide, company officials announced Wednesday.

In an “all-hands-on-deck” meeting before noon, about 3,000 C-17 workers in East Long Beach, Macon, Ga., Mesa, Ariz., El Paso, Texas, and St. Louis, were told in person or via webcast by top Boeing officials that the plant will close after the delivery of the last C-17 in 2015.

“Ending C-17 production was a very difficult but necessary decision,” said Dennis Muilenburg, president and chief executive officer of Boeing Defense, Space & Security.

“We want to thank the highly skilled and talented employees who have built this great airlifter for more than two decades and those who will help us as we continue to build the remaining 22 aircraft and support and modernize the global fleet for decades to come.”

The announcement comes nearly one week after Boeing handed over its 223rd and final C-17 to the Air Force in Charleston, S.C.

The decision to shutter the C-17 program was realized by Boeing officials around the same time of the last delivery to the Air Force, though the company had been considering the decision to end production for a long time, Nan Bouchard, Boeing vice president and C-17 program manager, told reporters in a conference call Wednesday afternoon.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Don Knabe, who was at last week’s delivery in Long Beach, said he was “outraged” to learn about the closure and added he will continue to lobby national leaders in Washington, D.C.

“The C-17 program has been synonymous with Long Beach for years and has been an economic stimulus for Los Angeles County, employing thousands of workers,” Knabe said. “With a local economy that remains sluggish and the unemployment rate stagnant at 9.2 percent, now is not the time for Boeing and the federal government to pull the rug out from underneath us and put more people out of work.
 
“The closure of Boeing’s Long Beach plant means local jobs will be lost and our region’s economic recovery will take yet another significant blow. But the impact of the closure extends far beyond Los Angeles County.”

Despite strong international interest, Boeing did not receive enough orders to protect the C-17 production line beyond 2015, Bouchard said, adding that 13 of the 22 remaining aircraft had no committed orders.

Seven of the orders are bound for India and two will be delivered to a not-yet-named international customer.

The “tough budget environment” faced by its international customers and issues involving U.S. sequestration — the automatic, across-the-board reductions triggered in March when lawmakers failed to agree on the nation’s budget — were uncertainties that led to some “difficult decisions,” Bouchard said.

Created in the late Cold War-era of the 1980s, the C-17 has evolved from fledging prototype to a military workhorse known for its ability to land and take off from short airfields and clocking more than 2.6 million flying hours in various peacekeeping and humanitarian missions.

But when the U.S. government stopped ordering C-17s, Boeing officials began seeking more foreign orders to keep the production line open.

Officials were optimistic, delivering 34 of its 257 C-17s to countries such as Australia, Canada, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates the United Kingdom, the 12-member Strategic Airlift Capability initiative of NATO and Partnership for Peace nations and India, its largest foreign customer.

But industry observers have wondered how much longer the Boeing program would survive without its bread-and-butter customer, the U.S. government.

“The C-17 is by far the best strategic airlifter that has ever been built, but trying to keep a plant running with sales only to foreigners is a tough job,” said aerospace analyst Loren Thompson, of the Lexington Institute, a Virginia think tank.

Currently, 20,000 people between Long Beach and all of its more than 650 suppliers in 44 states owe their employment to the C-17 program, Bouchard said.
A reduction in the workforce will begin in early 2014 and will be done in stages, with the bulk of the reductions occurring in mid-2014 until the last aircraft moves through the facility, Bouchard said.
 
“We recognize how closing the C-17 line will affect the lives of the men and women who work here, and we will do everything possible to assist our employees, their families and our community,” Bouchard said.

That assistance will range from providing financial counseling as well as resume and retirement help to finding employees work elsewhere in Boeing or outside of the company.

Long Beach Councilwoman Gerrie Schipske, who represents the district that encompasses the C-17 program, said this is an opportunity for other area companies to take very experienced, well-trained Long Beach workers and put them to work in technology and growth-industry jobs.
 
“It’s important to be able to provide new opportunities for these workers while the city of Long Beach has an 11.9 percent unemployment rate as of August … and a 22 percent poverty rate,” Schipske said in a statement.

Bouchard said it is too early to tell what will be done to the facility after the closure, but Boeing does not plan to move a commercial or military production program to the Long Beach site.

Meanwhile, Boeing will continue supporting the international C-17 fleet as part of a sustainment agreement, currently under contract through 2017 with annual options through 2021, Bouchard said.
 
Community leaders and Boeing employees reacted strongly to Wednesday’s news.
 “As work slowed over the last several years, we worked side by side with Boeing to extend the C-17 line for seven additional years,” he said. “There’s a sense of sadness to see the end of an institution, but Boeing has grown its commercial aircraft work and announced an engineering design center over the past few years that solidifies the company’s commitment in Long Beach.”

Meanwhile, many of the employees were caught off guard by the news, said Stan Klemchuk, president of the United Aerospace Workers — Local 148 representing 1,100 Boeing mechanics and other employees.

“This came out of nowhere,” he said, adding that the union was informed 15 minutes before the company made its announcement. “We’re in shock and devastated.”

Klemchuk said the union hoped and was led to believe that Boeing would secure enough small foreign orders to buy the company time to figure out other job-saving alternatives. They had been encouraged by some of the international orders over the years.

“Long Beach is losing good, high-paying jobs with benefits,” he said. “It’s just devastating.”

(Karen Robes Meeks - Long Beach Press Telegram)

 

Facts and figures about the Boeing C-17 Globemaster
 

9 million: parts that make up a C-17

2.6 million: operational flight hours exceeded by the C-17

213,000: total material weight in pounds

164,900: pounds of maximum payload

174: length in feet

169.8: wingspan to winglet tips in feet

120: miles of wiring

55.1: height at tail in feet

600: pounds of paint

3: total aircrew, including two in the cockpit and one loadmaster

0.74 to 0.77: Mach cruise speed

4: number of Pratt & Whitney engines

33: The number of world records set during flight-testing at Edwards Air Force Base, more than any other airlifter in history.

+20,000: number of jobs directly associated with the C-17 program

650: number of C-17 suppliers in 44 states

$5.8 billion: estimated total economic impact of C-17

MORE COOL INFO

* A C-17 can take off from a 7,000-foot airfield, fly 2,400 nautical miles and land on an airfield of 3,000 feet or less.

* A C-17 can carry Army vehicles in two side-by-side rows in its cargo compartment, or an M-1, an Army battle tank.

* A deployment load in a C-17 could include three Stryker infantry-fighting vehicles.

FOREIGN ORDERS: 34

India: 10 (only 3 delivered; 7 to be made in 2013-2014)

Qatar: 4

Australia: 6

United Arab Emirates Air Force: 6

United Kingdom: 8

Canada: 4

The 12-nation Strategic Airlift Capability consortium of NATO and Partnership for eace nations: 3

Kuwait: 2 (**still to be delivered**) 

Source: The Boeing Co.