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http://www.dailynews.com/business/20150 ... n-thursday
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http://www.dailynews.com/business/20150 ... n-thursdayPosted: 02/26/15, 11:26 AM PST
Workers at Boeing say goodbye to C-17 with last major join Thursday
LONG BEACH >> “Nothing lasts forever.”
That’s the message a Boeing plant worker scrawled on the fuselage of the 279th and final C-17 Globemaster aircraft being assembled
Thursday at the Long Beach manufacturing plant where the mammoth aircraft has been built for roughly a quarter century.
Thursday was the day when workers gathered to participate in — or at least watch — the last “major join” of a C-17 Globemaster that is ever expected to take place.
“It’s when all the major components come together to make a C-17,” said Anthony Murray, a senior manager of production operations for Boeing who was in charge of the work.
The Long Beach plant where Boeing produced the C-17 is set to close sometime this summer.
The pending conclusion of C-17 production is expected to close out the era of large aircraft production in Long Beach,
where the production of such famed military and civilian aircraft as
the B-17 Flying Fortress and DC-10 airliner
employed thousands upon thousands of people from the World War II years through the post-Cold War era.
“We’re experiencing part of history. Unfortunately, it’s the end,” 28-year Boeing employee Alfred Tellez said.
“When you talk about aircraft in Southern California, this is the last big hurrah.”
Murray, who has been working on C-17s since 1990, said the first major join took about one week; on Thursday, much of that work was accomplished in the space of one morning.
By all appearances, it was a successful morning at the plant. But that success brought the end of C-17 production that much closer.
“It’s emotional. You spend the majority of your life with these people, more than your own family,” Murray said.
“Most of the people have been here 25, 30 years and they become family.”
Boeing Co. delivered its 223rd and final C-17 to the Air Force in September 2013.
The aerospace firm has since only sold the C-17 to foreign countries including Australia, Canada, India and Kuwait.
As of Thursday, Boeing has seven unsold C-17s waiting for customers, according to the company.
Australia may acquire two of those planes and the company could not confirm a Reuters report that the United Arab Emirates
The ultimate fate of Boeing’s C-17 plant is not publicly known.
The number of employees has dwindled from 2,200 people (about 1,700 of whom were union workers) when Boeing announced the closure in late 2013 to a few hundred.
Boeing declined to say how many workers are still at the factory, but a union spokesman said that only 575 union workers would be left by today.
Boeing employee Tennie Moore is among those who plans to retire.
Moore said a lady doesn’t reveal her age, but did say she has 47 years
which was the Douglas Aircraft Co.’s first passenger jet plane.
For Moore, the end of C-17 production is a chance to go to school and study sign language.
Her daughter, Keshawn Moore, 34, cannot speak nor hear and Moore said her planned studies are “something dear to my heart.”
C-17 pilot Lt. Col. Tim Harris said in a telephone interview that there was a time when C-17s attached to March Air Reserve Base in Riverside were flying daily missions to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Harris has flown the C-17 since 1996, and said the 277,000-pound aircraft flies like it doesn’t know it’s so large.
The first C-17 jet to be sent to March Air Reserve Base was the “Spirit of California,” which Harris and Maj. Gen. Robert E. Duignan flew from Long Beach to Riverside in 2005.
Harris said he flew that very aircraft Wednesday night, which by then had been flown for some 9,000 hours. Harris predicted C-17s will be in use for a long time.
“The last pilot of that jet probably won’t be born for 30 years,” he said.
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