Puckett to Replace McKee on Fluor Corp. Board

Allen E. Puckett, the soon-to-retire chairman and chief executive officer of Hughes Aircraft Co., was elected Thursday to the board of Fluor Corp., the Irvine-based engineering and construction company.

Puckett, 67, who plans to retire from Hughes April 1, will replace Joseph V. McKee, 66, on the 15-member Fluor board.

McKee, former chairman and chief executive of Union Electric Corp., was a director of St. Joe Minerals when that company was acquired by Fluor in 1981. At that time McKee became a Fluor director. He retired from Union Electric in 1985 and now has resigned from the Fluor board for personal reasons, a Fluor spokesman said.

Fluor Chairman and Chief Executive Officer David S. Tappan Jr. described Puckett as “an outstanding scientist and corporate executive with a position of national prominence in the aerospace industry.”

A Fluor spokesman said Puckett’s expertise will benefit Fluor, which he said has targeted the active aerospace industry as an expansion “opportunity” in its corporate effort to diversify out of the energy field, which has suffered severely from falling oil prices.