The milestone number, which was confirmed by the company, stretches back decades to when the Spirit facility was still part of Boeing Commercial Airplanes and where production on the 737 dates back to the mid-1960s.
A company spokesperson says Spirit will hold an event to celebrate the achievement in the coming weeks.
Spirit, which has work on all Boeing commercial programs, builds about 70 percent of every 737 that the company delivers. Those deliveries now are comprised of the company’s Next-Generation 737 models and the growing 737 MAX family.
The 737 fuselages are transported by rail from Wichita to Boeing's assembly line in Renton, Washington.
Local work on the aircraft also involves numerous other smaller companies in the local supply base, making the high-volume 737 the most important aircraft program to the local economy.
And new delivery milestones are only going to continue to be hit in the coming years as Boeing will again increase the build rate on 737 this year to 52 aircraft per month, on its way to 57 per month in 2019.
Boeing had orders on its books at the end of January for 4,648 of the narrow-body 737s, representing years of continued work on the program for Spirit and the commercial aerospace cluster in Wichita.
(Daniel McCoy - Wichita Business Journal)
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