Boeing Selling Boeing

News releases in the Seattle Times site today announced a big sell-off of Boeing properties all over the Puget Sound area. Millions of square feet of office space and training sites.
I can't elaborate on it now now.

 

Seattle Times
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boeing-puts-up-for-sale-its-commercial-airplanes-headquarters-campus-outside-seattle/

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Interesting article. More fun to read the comments. Boeing Huntington Beach has only a few buildings still standing and they will be gone shortly.

 

I couldn't continue my post because my wife reminded me of a forgotten doctors appointment. There are 7 locations in this area that are being closed and sold. I worked at 5 of them. It's impressive, and not in a good way, to see almost all of the Boeing legacy disappearing here. Like they say, " The only thing that doesn't change is death and taxes."

 

I'm glad to see this happening, Boeing should have been reducing its footprint that is under the control of SPEAA and IAM long ago. They pay much higher labor rates and get much less out of the folks in those organizations than at other sites throughout the company. Its amazing to see the difference in mentality between the Seattle site and the other smaller sites (although St. Louis isn't much better).

 

Seattle deserves what it gets....choices have consequences.

 

Boeing Huntington Beach was the old McD facility we worked with on DC-X. They have been drawing that facility down for years. Have to look and see if Seal Beach is still running since that is where we did the X-37 work until the program went black. The program remained at Seal Beach.

 

Hard to do business in cities/states that are anti-business.

 

very little of Boeing is actually in Seattle. The stuff around Boeing field and the Duamish site.. that's about it. All the major production at places like Everett and Renton are outside Seattle city limits. There might be 1,000 people working inside the city limits and 60,000 outside but still in WA state

 

When I started at Boeing the total population was about 30,000 if I remember. The mid fifties saw the KC-135 and 707 start an explosion of successes that rapidly expanded the company to over 100,000. The footprint expanded accordingly and it covered sites all over the Puget Sound area not only for aircraft but space programs. The company did great things for the economy in this area and elsewhere in the country and the world. It didn't get there by chance but by producing a good product as the result of superb engineering and corporate integrity. Lately a complex situation of things internal and external has put the company in a tough position where it has been forced to reassess its operations. It has been there before and has successfully adjusted and I think that it will this time also if it addresses the mistakes in ignoring the excellence of the product in lieu of shortcuts to save a few bucks. I am a simple guy but I saw great successes in classic Boeing programs because of the engineering and , again, corporate integrity and unlimited customer support. I'll never understand the move of the corporate offices from Seattle to Chicago and what it was supposed to do. I drive down East marginal Way and see that all the buildings in which I worked have been destroyed is thought provoking experience. Yeah, yeah, that's progress.

 

Consider ‘Seattle’ to be a euphemism for King/Snohomish County.

 

Interesting.

I’ll admit that I bought a ton of stock some time after the two 737 Max crashes, based on:
—Hey, that’s a nice discount
—The income for servicing planes already in fleets will be huge
—This is a little like the BP oil spill, where I did really well
—Heck, it’s Boeing

I’m still in for the long haul. We’ll see.

Matt

 

Big business brings jobs which build cities, then someone decides big business is bad, or decide they should pay for everything, so the company moves.

Then they blame them for moving.

I’m hoping at some point people will understand cause and effect.

I know - call me a dreamer.

 

They see it as further proof of the evil of capitalism and reinforces their mission to bring it under their direct control.
In reality, everyone sees themselves as the hero of their internal epic story.

 

It was supposed to make the company less reliant on the Commercial group and get out of the Seattle mindset. Less than half of Boeing employees are located in Washington. They have large sites in Huntsville, Philadelphia, Oklahoma, St. Louis, Houston, South Carolina and California. By having the HQ in Seattle all those other sites get ignored along with their significant product lines which are mostly on the Defense side. The whole point of the merger was to give Boeing another revenue source that wasn't so cyclical. Having the Defense group has allowed the company to make it through the Max and Covid issues. I think if it wasn't for the defense side of the business to provide revenue they would have gone bankrupt this year.

 

Recently, Boeing has been very successful on the defense side with the T-7A, MQ-25, KC-46A (sort of), F-15EX, and F/A-18E/F wins/contracts. The B-52H is being upgraded, too, and space support has been a success. They intentionally crapped out on Phantom Express/XSP, though.

 

Don't forget the rotary wing aircraft as well, Boeing delivered 70 Apaches, 30 Chinooks, and 17 V-22's in 2020.

 

Plant 2 was built during WWII and government owned when it was built and for a long time after. Partly why Boeing did not use it for commercial aircraft work (mostly). Not much different than the Convair facility that was on the NE side of Lindberg Field in San Diego until the 90's.

 

That's still around today. The Lockheed Martin assembly building in Marietta where I spent the last 7 years of my career is actually Air Force Plant 6, and LM is only a tenant that the USAF could kick out at any time! Their mile-long plant in Fort Worth is, I believe, Air Force Plant 3.

 

Affirmative, I was there (USAF) in Ft Worth when L-M was building F-111s (as GD) and F-16s.

 

I used to work in the Everett 747 plant in the late 70's. One day I was asked to go to the desk of a certain engineer. It was in a engineering building I never visited before. I think his desk was on the 2nd floor.

I took the little shuttle vehicle, I walked up the stairs, and opened the door. What I saw was rows of drafting tables all facing one another going on to what appeared infinity. No partitions, just drafting tables with guys with white shirts and black ties drawing stuff on white velum paper. I was in shock that so many were working making these drawings of who knows what. My view also was a good chuck of these engineers were British. I imagine a quite a few were working on the 777 project which Everett was going to make.

Today I imagine 90% of those people are replaced with computer terminals and software in little cubicles somewhere around the world. Its no surprise Boeing is cutting down on office space in the Seattle area to me.

They literally don't make them like they used to.

 

I did the same thing from 1952 until 1980 or so. Then came CATIA and I struggled for a year or two to cope with that. My final days were working on the 777 with CATIA but I will always miss the ink and linen days when a draftsman's art was appreciated. I was surprised one day when an engineer told me that they missed seeing my drawings. And now, my old group is working from home in front of computer screens, scattered all over the place. Several years ago my work, art and Boeing drawings were featured in a display at an art gallery in Everette. My grandson came in to see it and looked at the display of the traditional old drafting works and said, " How did you get all those lines so straight and all those curves so good?" He is a typical young computer guy and I had to show him the array of drafting tools that are no longer in use. Hundreds of dollars worth of tools, curves, pens, and templates that will never be used again.

 

I love looking at some of the old drawings that were well done like I'm sure Bob's were. Unfortunately for every great drawing there was one that was ...less great. I won't throw too many stones as I'm sure I could do no better, but man they can be frustrating to try and read. I'm curious what ever happened to all the drawings for the out of service Boeing legacy planes from the 40s and 50s. Hopefully they are still around somewhere and will someday be made available to the public.

2D drawings, even made by computers are on their way out now too. Instead we are doing 'model based engineering' where the 3D cad model is the engineering authority and 2D drawings aren't even produced.

 

It would have been the 767 at the time, but you were right; I worked there for a time, on loan from Grumman, and Bob Parks was nearby. I believe our building was numbered 40-86. I don't remember many Brits but there were Italians and Japanese, also on loan from their companies (all of which were subcontractors) working in the next room.

By 1979 the shirts weren't necessarily white and the ties were becoming optional; we even wore jeans on Fridays. We were doing some computer drafting work, but it was off to the side in very cold "scope rooms" on an early CAD system called Gerber IDS. In fact, its annotation functions were so clumsy that we would create the part geometry only, print it out on mylar, and do the annotation (callouts and dimensions) by hand using ink pens! Back in the main room our drawing boards were 3 abreast between aisles and I was unfortunate enough to have the "middle seat". We also had to share telephones, and with no partitions in the room you couldn't "hide" from anybody!

Incidentally, my boss at the time was a fellow named Bob Hammer. He is now head of an outfit at the other end of Paine Field called Legend Flyers that built some new-build Messerschmitt Me 262s and is now restoring an original Mitsubishi Zero.

 

Sorry 767. I think you are correct on that. I never worked on either. Just 747 special projects.