7E7 order hits back of the net

Published 9:00 pm Sunday, May 2, 2004

I wanted to write today about the storybook run of the Silvertips, Everett’s expansion hockey team that won the WHL’s Western Conference Finals last week.

It’s hard to find a better story than that one: a group of players mostly unwanted by other teams have become champions on guts, hard work and great coaching.

But there was a much better story out of last week’s news — things are turning around at the Boeing Co.

All Nippon Airway’s order of 50 7E7s Monday was a major event, one of those things that could prove very significant in Everett’s history.

The community breathed a collective sigh of relief last December when Boeing announced that it was going ahead with the 7E7 and that it would build it in Everett. But Everett’s win of the national competition to build the new jetliner didn’t mean a thing if airlines didn’t buy it.

So All Nippon’s order has made the Dreamliner a reality.

Company officials say the order, the biggest launch of any Boeing plane by a single customer, is just the beginning. They hinted there would be more orders to announce soon and that they fully expect to sell some 500 of the new planes before 2008.

Of course company officials have also warned that the orders aren’t going to mean a return to boom times in New Jet City.

The 7E7 Dreamliner eventually will mean some 800 to 1,200 jobs, a fraction of the thousands of workers Boeing has jettisoned since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, sent the airline industry into a tailspin.

But the 7E7 news is still huge.

For one thing, it helps Boeing stop the bleeding and think about building.

The 7E7 orders should stabilize employment in the community. And since Boeing expects to sell some 3,500 of the Dreamliners during the next 20 years, it should mean a nice base of well-paying manufacturing jobs.

These are jobs using new technology and new materials, including a lot of composites that are ultra light and strong. Using new techniques and large chunks of the plane assembled by subcontractors, Boeing hopes to build 7E7s in three days.

While that sounds like a stretch, the Everett plant should be on the cutting edge of manufacturing.

Couple that with the money being invested at the University of Washington for composites research and the new school the state is building in Everett to train people working with those materials and you might have something important for our future.

It very well may make the area one of few in the country with a trained composites workforce — something that could help create jobs here that have nothing to do with aerospace.

Another reason the All Nippon announcement was huge is that the order ensures Boeing’s 7E7 suppliers that there will be work for them to do. What had been theoretical is now reality.

At that means some subcontractors may be relocating here or building new facilities near Everett’s Boeing plant, adding several hundred more jobs.

The announcement could also wake up some people who have waiting for word on the new jetliner before deciding to invest in the community.

Port of Everett director John Mohr said the announcement clearly turns the heat up on the port’s redevelopment of the north marina area because its partner, Maritime Trust, clearly will want its shops and condos and offices to coincide with an economic resurgence.

The 50-plane order may not sound like much in a community that has built many of the world’s airliners.

But it was both good news and big news. And it could pay some big dividends both now and in the future.

Mike Benbow: 425-339-3459; benbow@heraldnet.com.