The cockpit section of the last C-17A (F-279) to be built is moved into position to be joined to its fuselage section.
(Photo by Brad Graverson - Long Beach Press Telegram)
Nothing lasts forever.”
That’s the message a Boeing plant worker scrawled on the fuselage of the 279th and final C-17 Globemaster aircraft being assembled Thursday at the Long Beach manufacturing plant where the mammoth aircraft has been built for roughly a quarter century. Thursday was the day when workers gathered to participate in — or at least watch — the last “major join” of a C-17 Globemaster that is ever expected to take place.
It’s when all the major components come together to make a C-17,” said Anthony Murray, a senior manager of production operations for Boeing who was in charge of the work.
The Long Beach plant where Boeing produced the C-17 is set to close sometime this summer. The pending conclusion of C-17 production is expected to close out the era of large aircraft production in Long Beach, where the production of such famed military and civilian aircraft as the B-17 Flying Fortress and DC-10 airliner employed thousands upon thousands of people from the World War II years through the post-Cold War era.
“We’re experiencing part of history. Unfortunately, it’s the end,” 28-year Boeing employee Alfred Tellez said. “When you talk about aircraft in Southern California, this is the last big hurrah.”
Aerospace, however, isn’t dead yet in Long Beach. Virgin Galactic has announced plans to build satellite launch vehicles on land where Boeing workers previously made aircraft. Tellez said he expects commercial spaceflight companies like Virgin Galactic or Space Exploration Technologies, known as SpaceX, will prove to be the future of aerospace in the region.
For the C-17, its history goes back to 1980 when the U.S. Air Force called for a large cargo aircraft that could take off and land on rough airstrips. McDonnell Douglas, later acquired by Boeing, accomplished this in 1991 when the first C-17 took flight.
Murray, who has been working on C-17s since 1990, said the first major join took about one week; on Thursday, much of that work was accomplished in the space of one morning. The sound of an alarm rang out inside the cavernous Long Beach assembly plant shortly before 9 a.m. when workers employed an industrial crane to hoist the C-17’s nose assembly, which includes the cockpit, up and above the large blue dolly where the assembly had been placed in preparation for the task.
The workers used the crane to move the aircraft’s assembly toward a large piece of special equipment near the structure supporting the main fuselage. The nose assembly was then lowered so that it was nestled at the center of what was essentially a U-shaped structure with staircases on either side of the place where the nose assembly could rest.
Employing unseen air bags at the base of that structure, the workers maneuvered the nose assembly back toward the fuselage so that only a few inches of space separated the massive components.
The wings, also carried over the factory floor by crane, came next. Boeing workers then towed the tail assembly into position.
By all appearances, it was a successful morning at the plant. But that success brought the end of C-17 production that much closer.
“It’s emotional. You spend the majority of your life with these people, more than your own family,” Murray said. “Most of the people have been here 25, 30 years and they become family.”
Boeing Co. delivered its 223rd and final C-17 to the Air Force in September 2013. The aerospace firm has since only sold the C-17 to foreign countries including Australia, Canada, India and Kuwait.
As of Thursday, Boeing has seven unsold C-17s waiting for customers, according to the company. Australia may acquire two of those planes and the company could not confirm a Reuters report that the United Arab Emirates had just purchased two of the aircraft.
The ultimate fate of Boeing’s C-17 plant is not publicly known.
The number of employees has dwindled from 2,200 people (about 1,700 of whom were union workers) when Boeing announced the closure in late 2013 to a few hundred. Some of the more than 2,000 workers in Long Beach affected by the closure have already retired or transferred out of state to other Boeing facilities, but many are in their late 40s and early 50s with families they are reluctant to uproot.
Boeing declined to say how many workers are still at the factory, but a union spokesman said that only 575 union workers would be left by today.
Boeing employee Tennie Moore is among those who plans to retire. Moore said a lady doesn’t reveal her age, but did say she has 47 years of experience at the plant and worked on the DC-8, which was the Douglas Aircraft Co.’s first passenger jet plane.
For Moore, the end of C-17 production is a chance to go to school and study sign language. Her daughter, Keshawn Moore, 34, cannot speak nor hear and Moore said her planned studies are “something dear to my heart.”
The C-17 Globemaster can carry nearly 165,000 pounds worth of passengers and equipment and has become an important part of the military’s ability to bring personnel and supplies in and out of war zones and disaster areas where humanitarian aid is needed. The C-17 flew its first combat mission on March 26, 2003, Army paratrooper and Air Force personnel descended upon Bashur airfield in northern Iraq.
The C-17 would also play an important role during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars by flying wounded personnel away from combat zones. C-17 pilot Lt. Col. Tim Harris said in a telephone interview that there was a time when C-17s attached to March Air Reserve Base in Riverside were flying daily missions to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Harris has flown the C-17 since 1996, and said the 277,000-pound aircraft flies like it doesn’t know it’s so large. The C-17’s four engines release exhaust in front of its wings, and Harris said that results in the engines’ thrust also generating lift that allows it to take off from a small runway.
Outside of combat operations, March Air Reserve Base has dispatched C-17s to relief missions in places like Haiti after a major 2010 earthquake and New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
The first C-17 jet to be sent to March Air Reserve Base was the “Spirit of California,” which Harris and Maj. Gen. Robert E. Duignan flew from Long Beach to Riverside in 2005. Harris said he flew that very aircraft Wednesday night, which by then had been flown for some 9,000 hours. Harris predicted C-17s will be in use for a long time.
“The last pilot of that jet probably won’t be born for 30 years,” he said.
(Andrew Edwards - Long Beach Press Telegram)
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