Boeing move to S.C. may be foolish (Nov. 4)
By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune
Until a few weeks ago, I thought that the painstaking care the Boeing Co. was taking getting its 787 Dreamliner off the ground would make the aircraft safer for those of us who might fly on it.
But now I don’t know.
Boeing has decided to build a new plant in which to build the 787 — in South Carolina.
I think that’s bad decision.
While I’m sure the folks in South Carolina will try to do a good job putting the planes together, if it ain’t a Seattle Boeing, I ain’t going.
The Boeing employees in Seattle represent generations of airliner-building experience and knowledge, from engineers to riveters. The managers would like to think they can take their plans to South Carolina and have South Carolinians who have never built an airliner put them together, but it won’t be the same.
Seattle-area Boeing workers build the 737, 747, 757, 767 and 777, which set the standards for all other airliners. When you get on those planes, you know they’re going to fly. All you have to do is look at their records.
Now, Boeing managers are trying to build the 787 out of carbon composites to make it lighter than aluminum, but they aren’t letting the best airliner builders on earth — those who live around Puget Sound — build those composite components. They are are ordering them from other manufacturers, some of whom are overseas, and apparently aren’t quite sure what they’re doing. Mistakes and bad timing on the part of those companies have cost Boeing dearly in delays and design changes.
Boeing’s move to South Carolina is meant to get it away from the pricey unions with which it deals in Seattle, and you can’t blame the company for wanting to do that. But it may, in the end, gain Boeing nothing.
Airliners aren’t like cars. They are the most expensive and complicated of passenger-carrying machines, besides spacecraft. If one model isn’t safe, people will turn to manufacturers they can rely on.
