Boeing stellt 717 ein

[Martin]

Trauriger Tag für DC-9-Fans: Boeing stellt 2006 die Produktion der 717 ein...

[LOWA]

Fürwahr sehr traurig ... Ich war/bin ein großer Freund der gesamten DC 9 Familie. Meine Lieblinge sind die DC9-32/MD 87.

Hat jemand vielleicht einen Überblick wieviele Maschinen der DC9-Reihe (inkl. MD80 und B 717) insgesamt und wieviele von jedem Modell gebaut wurden?

[Martin]

Da kann ich Dir zum Beispiel diesen Link anbieten (leider nur für die 717):

http://active.boeing.com/commercial/orders/userdefinedselection.cfm

[Stefan767]

Hab doch gewusst das ich was in den unendlichen Weiten meiner Favoriten hab

http://bird5.bird.ch/bharms/asr_sh00.htm

Total 1194 MD-8X gebaut
Für eine Aufstellung pro Typ musst halt ein bisserl zählen

[N5528P]

Bald ist es so weit...

Twilight of an era for California as plane production winds down

End of 717 and likely stop of C-17 would mean no more planes built in a state once central to commercial aircraft industry

April 24, 2006

LONG BEACH, Calif. -- In the corner of a cavernous factory, the last Boeing 717 is wrapped in scaffolding, getting its finishing touches. Its delivery to AirTran Airways next month will mark the end of seven decades of commercial airplane production in Southern California.


Workers still make the C-17 at Boeing's plant in Long Beach, but there are no new orders for the plane in the '07 U.S. military budget.

At another sprawling complex nearby, thousands of workers still produce the Boeing C-17 military cargo plane. However, there are no new orders for the aircraft in the proposed Defense Department budget. If congressional efforts to restore the program fail, the last of those flying warehouses will be delivered in 2008, and all airplane production would end in California -- once the center of commercial and military airplane construction in the nation. Indeed, as corporate consolidation and defense cuts sent airplane production to Seattle, St. Louis and other regions, Southern California has moved from metal bending to aerospace research and development.


Boeing avionic technician Bob Williams works on the cockpit of a C-17 cargo plane in Long Beach, Calif.

Today's workers build satellites, helicopters and unmanned surveillance drones while developing rockets and military jets that are made elsewhere. As the nation's defense priorities shifted, Northrop Grumman Corp. went from building B-2 stealth bombers and other planes in the region to providing electronic warfare systems.

Boeing builds satellites in El Segundo. And at a research facility in Palmdale, Lockheed Martin Corp. is developing the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the next generation warplane. California's congressional delegation believes the high-wing, four-engine C-17 still has a place in that arsenal. "We live in a time of uncertainty. No one knows how many C-17s we will need," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said during a recent tour of the factory in Long Beach that employs 6,000 people.

The cargo plane has been used since 1991 to airlift heavy equipment and transport troops. Supporters say its ability to land on short dirt runways has helped take the load off supply trucks that come under heavy fire in Iraq and Afghanistan. To replace the C-17, the Defense Department will consider acquiring a proposed new tanker aircraft and modernizing another transport plane, the larger C-5.


Boeing mechanic Norman Wade works on a 717 in Long Beach, Calif. Its delivery will wrap up more than 70 years of commercial plane production in Southern California.

Only 180 more C-17 planes remain on order in California. The planes cost about $154 million each. Ron Marcotte, Boeing vice president of global mobility systems, said it could take billions of dollars and several years to restart the program if it shuts down. "It's the suppliers and the learning of this work force which would go away overnight," he said.

No effort is in the works to save the Boeing 717, a midsize, twin-jet passenger plane that struggled to find its market. Boeing has sold 155 of the planes since the first delivery in 1999. Many of the unionized workers on the assembly line have transferred to the C-17 program or been placed in jobs at other aerospace companies. The final 717 is being painted and checked out for final delivery. The names of the 800 workers who built it have been scrawled on the inside skin of its fuselage and covered by metal paneling.

Many have worked on airplanes for a quarter-century or more. Boeing employee Kelly Jenson spent 21 years building passenger planes before shifting to the C-17, where his fate is uncertain. "We spend a minimum of eight hours a day here, sometimes 10 or 12," Jensen said. "We're with each other more than we're with our family. This is our family."

Originalartikel zu finden unter: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/267726_lastplane24.html

[N5528P]

Das wars dann...

Era Ends as Jetliner Takes to the Sky
The plane, a Boeing 717, is the last big passenger aircraft to be built in Southern California.
May 24, 2006

As hundreds of people on the tarmac waved goodbye, Boeing Co.'s last 717 airliner took off Tuesday from Long Beach Airport, marking the end of 90 years of commercial airplane production in Southern California. The new twin-engine jetliner made for AirTran Airways was the 15,599th commercial or military plane built at the sprawling manufacturing complex at the airport since 1941.

"They're calling it a celebration, but it feels more like a funeral," said Alvin Frye, an aircraft inspector who was hired at the plant in 1965.

Frye, 62, was among 3,000 current and former workers who gathered to mark the plant's last aircraft delivery and relive its storied history. While typical aircraft delivery ceremonies are cheerful and filled with balloons, Tuesday's occasion was solemn and eerily quiet, except for a stand where employees were briskly selling shirts embossed with 717 logos at half price.

The Long Beach plant, owned by Boeing, was built by Douglas Aircraft Co. and still has a large "Fly DC Jets" sign out front. For decades it thrived, producing some of the world's most popular airliners, including the DC-3, DC-8 and MD-80.

After the delivery ceremony some spectators stayed to watch the last plane take off, including Jerry Callaghan, who helped design the 717. Callaghan, who is now retired, recalled that he was standing at the same spot a decade ago when he witnessed the first flight of a 717. He said Tuesday that he felt as if he were seeing his child "go off and leave the nest. This is it. Everything has to come to an end," Callaghan said as he was hugged by his wife, Joan.

Boeing announced last year that it would close the 717 line because of slow sales of the single-aisle jetliner. It was a plane that Boeing inherited when it acquired McDonnell Douglas Corp. in 1997, but the 717, originally called the MD-95, never caught on with major airlines.

The Long Beach complex was part of Southern California's golden era of aviation as pioneers took advantage of the temperate climate and lots of open space to test their new flying machines. In 1916, the Loughhead brothers formed a firm that became Lockheed Aircraft and two decades later built planes for Amelia Earhart. In the '20s, Donald Douglas set up his firm behind a Los Angeles barber shop. A few years later a small San Diego firm started by Claude Ryan built the plane that Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic. Other Southland aviation pioneers included Jack Northrop and Howard Hughes, who built companies that bore their names and flourished.

At its peak during World War II, the Douglas Aircraft plant in Long Beach employed 50,000 people and a new plane was completed every two hours. Its prosperity spawned new communities, such as Lakewood, to house workers.

Among the early residents were couples such as Billy and Evelyn Dewees, who attended Tuesday's ceremony wearing their old McDonnell Douglas employee badges. Evelyn started working at the Long Beach plant in 1954 building the C-133 and then the C-124 military cargo planes. Billy was hired three years later. Evelyn's starting pay was $1.24 an hour, plus a bonus of 8 cents an hour for working the swing shift. That beat the going rate of 80 cents an hour for an office job, she recalled. "They treated us well," she said, noting how aerospace helped spawn a middle class in the area. "And we got good pensions, better than most." The Deweeses retired in 1989, walking out of the factory holding hands.

Aerospace manufacturing in the Southland peaked in the late 1980s before the end of the Cold War triggered a major retrenchment that led to consolidation of the industry as competition from overseas grew. "We lost all of that in the early 1990s," said Joseph Magaddino, head of Cal State Long Beach's economics department. "Almost half a million [aerospace] jobs were lost in the region."

With the loss of airliner production, local aircraft manufacturing employment is now about 40,000, down some three-quarters from its peak. Much of the Southland's aerospace work has shifted to military research and development.

One reason for the 717's demise was that its cockpit configuration is different from that of other planes in Boeing's family of jetliners. Some former 717 workers lamented Tuesday that the plane never got the marketing support to make it successful. In all, 156 of the 717s were built, short of the 200 Boeing said would need to be sold for the plane to be deemed profitable.

About 1,800 people worked on the 717 assembly line five years ago, but only 160 were left to build the last of the planes. At least one hangar is likely to stay open for 717 maintenance work and will employ a skeletal crew. Some workers on the 717 assembly line retired, while others such as Frye were shifted to another Boeing factory in Long Beach that builds C-17 transport planes. But that facility will be closed in 2008 unless the Air Force orders additional planes.

Although jetliners will no longer be assembled in Southern California, it is still home to thousands of suppliers that make parts for Boeing and Europe's Airbus, the only two makers of big commercial airliners. The region also remains the site of the nation's top advanced aerospace research and development firms, which design satellites, rockets and robotic planes.

At Lockheed Martin Corp.'s famed "Skunkworks" in Palmdale, for example, more than 4,000 engineers work on top-secret aircraft programs. And Torrance is still home to the nation's largest helicopter maker, Robinson Helicopter Co.

But for many longtime residents, Tuesday's 717 ceremony marked the end of an era. A large section of the Boeing complex in Long Beach has already been bulldozed to make room for homes and offices. "We've lived here for 55 years and to see all of that disappear is very sad," Evelyn Dewees said. "It's like losing a child."


READY TO ROLL: A 717 jetliner made for AirTran Airways waits on the tarmac in Long Beach next to a Douglas Aircraft DC-3, propeller at left. The first DC-3 entered airline service in 1936.


AERIAL SALUTE: Boeing employees acknowledge a flyover at Long Beach Airport by the newest 717 jetliner. Southern California has lost hundreds of thousands of aerospace aviation industry jobs since the late 1980s.

Originalartikel zu finden unter: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-fi-boeing24may24,1,5116671.story?ctrack=1&cset=true