Future of C-17 Line Still Up in the Air
Despite clearing a key congressional test, efforts to extend the production of Boeing Co.’s C-17 military cargo jet and save the biggest private employer in Long Beach still face a cloudy future.
A defense appropriations bill approved by the House on Tuesday night includes $798 million to purchase three additional C-17s for the Air Force. Production of the plane, which is built at a Long Beach plant employing 5,500 workers, is scheduled to end in 2008 with delivery of the last of 180 aircraft ordered by the Pentagon.
Even if funding for additional C-17s passes the Senate, Boeing executives said the new order would be insufficient to justify keeping the plant open.
“The fundamental bottom line is, Congress by itself cannot save this program,” said Dan Page, Boeing’s director of airlift business development. “It’s going to take the administration from the White House on down acting to do that. What we really need is a long-term commitment” from the Air Force to buy more planes.
Saving the C-17 has become a priority for California’s congressional delegation in the wake of the closing of the state’s last commercial airplane plant last month.
The C-17 is now the last major airplane factory left in Southern California, once a bastion of commercial and military aircraft production. Making aircraft and aircraft components now employs about 40,000 people in the Southland -- down about three-quarters from the Reagan era.
An Air Force general said this month that the service doesn’t need any more C-17s, and despite an intensive overseas sales effort, Boeing so far hasn’t landed many orders. Australia has said it will buy four more of the aircraft and Britain one more, while Canada reportedly wants three.
“Even those orders, if you add them all up, are not enough to keep us going long-term,” Page said.
Still, for officials desperate to keep the Long Beach plant running, the House vote is a ray of hope.
“It signifies the Defense Department’s growing commitment to continued construction of the C-17 aircraft,” said Andrea Taylor, spokeswoman for Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald (D-Carson), who is leading the House effort to keep the C-17 alive.
“We think it’s a positive first step, but it’s a first step,” said Robert Swayze, manager of economic development for Long Beach. “Boeing does need a long-term commitment for more planes.”
Swayze heads the “red team” of elected officials and businesses that is pushing to keep the C-17 line open. Its efforts have included plant tours and discussions of lower electricity rates for Boeing, as well as a C-17 fly-by at the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach in April.
Because of the long lead time needed to procure parts from some of the program’s 700 subcontractors, Boeing must decide in the next few weeks whether to keep financing advance work on components for aircraft that haven’t been ordered yet -- and may never be. Halting that advance work could make at least a temporary shutdown of the assembly line in 2008 inevitable.
“The viability of this program is very much at stake,” said Rick Sanford, a spokesman for the Chicago-based Boeing.
A Senate subcommittee is expected to take up the additional C-17 appropriation next month, according to a spokesman for Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) who said the senator was “very supportive of the C-17.”
The Air Force signaled late last year that it wouldn’t request any more C-17s beyond its original order of 180. Air Force officials couldn’t be reached for comment Wednesday.
The C-17, known as the Globemaster III, transports troops and heavy equipment to trouble spots around the world, including Afghanistan and Iraq. It also ferried food and other relief supplies to the Gulf Coast after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. A total of 152 planes, which currently cost $186 million each, have been delivered since 1993.
Congress and defense officials have been debating whether to build more C-17s -- the Air Force initially requested 222 -- or spend billions refurbishing the service’s aging fleet of C-5 Galaxy cargo jets.
As for the Globemaster, “the issue isn’t really the aircraft,” said Loren Thompson, defense policy analyst with Lexington Institute. “The Air Force loves the plane. The problem is that it simply doesn’t have enough money to do everything else it wants to do, and it has higher priorities.”
Specifically, the Air Force wants to replace its fleet of 1960s-era KC-135 aerial refueling jets, Thompson said. Tankers based on airliners produced by Boeing and its European rival Airbus are considered potential replacements.
One analyst sees the jousting over the C-17 as merely “high theater” that will ultimately result in funding for a significant number of additional aircraft.
“The real issue is what happens in ‘08” said Richard Aboulafia, vice president of analysis at aerospace consultant Teal Group. “It’s inconceivable that [the assembly] line is going to go cold.”
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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
Winding down
Production of the C-17 cargo jet in Long Beach will end in 2008 unless significant new orders are placed for the plane.
First flight: 1991
First delivery to Air Force: 1993
Total in Air Force contract: 180
Cost per plane: $186 million
Number of planes delivered
to Air Force so far: 152
Employees working on C-17 assembly line: 5,500
Workers employed in Southern California by C-17 subcontractors: 5,700
Sources: Boeing Co., City of Long Beach
Los Angeles Times
