It wasn’t exactly a massive wave of telephone calls, but the messages I got were loudly spoken and to the point: Why the &@#% isn’t Everett pursuing this new Airbus tanker factory?
“They should,” said T.M. Sell, a professor of political economy at Highline Community College and a longtime watcher of the Boeing Co. “Diversification, from a purely economic standpoint, is a good thing.”
Besides, he said, “with the new Boeing, they’d sell your mother for parts storage. You don’t want to put your eggs in one basket.”
A quick recap for those who may have missed it last week.
EADS, the European company that owns 80 percent of Airbus, wants to get into the aerial refueling tanker business by offering converted A330 jets to compete against Boeing’s Everett-built 767 tankers.
To polish its bid, EADS proposes creating an engineering center and a factory in the United States, where A330s built in Toulouse would be converted for military use. It envisions a $600 million facility that would employ about 1,000 people, plus a 100-person design team.
EADS hired a Texas-based real estate company to do its site search – the Staubach Co., owned by former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach. It invited each state to submit three potential sites, and held a meeting in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday to disclose details of what it’s looking for and how it plans to proceed.
Washington’s Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development – the same agency that carried the ball during our state’s effort to land Boeing’s 7E7 plant in 2003 – identified Everett, Moses Lake and Spokane as the three most suitable potential sites.
Everett publicly opted out of the process last week, declaring that this is Boeing Country and proud of it. Mayor Ray Stephanson all but ordered his staffers to slap “If it Ain’t Boeing, I Ain’t Going” bumper stickers on city vehicles.
“We believe in the product that our hometown company is building with local workers,” he said.
However, the Snohomish County Economic Development Council still is keeping an eye on things.
There’s a very good reason, development council chief Deborah Knutson said. Maybe we don’t want Airbus here, but Staubach is one of the nation’s top site-selection firms, and this is a golden opportunity for Snohomish County to show off the strength of its aerospace industry and overall business climate.
More than 30 states sent delegations to Tuesday’s meeting, the Associated Press reported. The list included Arizona, California, Florida, Kansas, Illinois, Missouri, Pennsylvania and Texas – all states where Boeing does business.
The phone calls and e-mails I got from readers all had one theme: We’ve got a big group of unemployed aerospace workers, and if Boeing doesn’t want them, they’re willing to work for Airbus.
Coincidentally, that’s what’s piquing the interest of pundits in Europe.
The Daily Mail of London reported that while several U.S. states are interested in the factory, “the Washington region is seen as one of the most likely places to site a factory because of its skills base.”
An EADS spokesman told The Daily Mail that “the chief criteria are a good runway and skilled workers. Washington state sounds a good place.”
And state spokeswoman Michelle Zahrly told the paper that Washington wants to be “a center for aerospace, and there are more companies around than Boeing.”
It could all be for naught. EADS will only build the facilities if it gets the tanker bid, and that’s a long shot, given the mood in the other Washington toward our European allies.
Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, for example, calls the EADS plan nothing more than a “slick campaign” to drum up political support.
“It’s a ploy to capture American tax dollars for a French company and French jobs,” Murray spokeswoman Alex Glass told AP. “We think the tankers are going to be built in the United States, and be built by Boeing.”
Rep. Rick Larsen, another Washington Democrat who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, told AP that he supports Boeing-built tankers.
My gut tells me that even if EADS should get a tanker contract, it is far more likely going to go to a state like Texas, which also has a skilled aerospace work force and plenty of upfront cash to dangle at companies.
But The Daily Mail quoted a Port of Moses Lake manager as saying, “We know this is Boeing country, but if Airbus is going to build something in the U.S. anyway, why not Moses Lake?”
And why not Everett, Sell asks.
“It’s a good place to do business, and a good place to do aerospace business in particular,” he said.
Sell chuckled. “And what a coup for Airbus – the entertainment factor alone is good for them.”
Have a comment on this topic? Post it online at Bryan Corliss’s aerospace Web log at www.heraldnet.com/blog.
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