Aviation News, Boeing, Airbus

100 North Riverside Chicago, IL 60606 (312) 544-2000 www. boeing.com

From the early days of rickety biplanes to today's high-tech space vehicles, the Boeing Company has been a world leader in aerospace and aviation, known for its highly skilled engineers. Millions of commercial airline passengers fly its jets, including the 757, 777, and the 747 "jumbo jet." Boeing has also provided the U.S. government with some of its best fighter planes and bombers, as well as missile systems. And circling Earth is the International Space Station, with a laboratory and living quarters made by Boeing.

A New Company in a New Industry

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Aviation was still a mystery to most Americans when businessman William Boeing and U.S. Navy engineer George Conrad Westervelt began building airplanes. Working out of Boeing's boathouse in Seattle, Washington, the two men and an assistant completed a plane, called the B & W, in June 1916. The next month, Boeing officially formed the Pacific Aero Products Company, which later became the Boeing Airplane Company.

When the U.S. Navy assigned Westervelt to the East Coast, Boeing hired Tsu Wong as his engineer. Wong's improvements to the B & W led to the Model C, Boeing's first commercial success. During World War I (1914-18), the company sold fifty Model C's to the U.S. government; its first international sale came when New Zealand bought two for its postal service. After the war, however, the demand for planes fell, and Boeing made furniture and small boats to stay in business.

Military sales picked up in the early 1920s, as did sales to the airmail industry. Boeing's Model 40A had a lightweight engine that let it carry twice as much mail as any other plane using the same amount of fuel. Boeing won government contracts to carry mail between Chicago, Illinois, and San Francisco, California, and it formed an airline company, Boeing Air Transport. After buying several other airlines, Boeing called its transport company United Air Lines.

Growing Bigger, Breaking Apart

New to the field of fighter, or pursuit as they were then called, design and construction, the engineers at Boeing Aircraft Company gained valuable experience after winning a contract to build under license 200 Thomas Morse MB-3As for the Army Air Service.

Inspection of a captured Fokker D.VII led to Boeing adopting the craft’s steel tube fuselage and several other features - which could be seen duplicated in the company’s Model 15 which first flew on 2 June 1923.

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The Army and Navy were interested in the aircraft and both placed orders for the machine - PW-9s for the Army and FB-is for the Navy. The ten FB-ls went to the Marines and nine of these were assigned to the Expeditionary Force in China during 1927/28 where they were operated by VF-l OM. Two FB-2s followed and these aircraft were carrier compatible. The FB-3, three of which were built, were similar to the -2 but could be fitted with twin floats. The unique FB-4 had a Wright P-1 radial of 450-hp and could be fitted

By Chris Grenz

Boeing’s supposed unchallenged supremacy in the commercial aircraft market, particularly since its merger with McDonnell Douglas two years ago, has been steadily eroded by the European Airbus consortium. A price war between the two has been particularly detrimental to Boeing’s profit margins, not least because of many highly embarrassing production glitches. If that were not enough, Boeing’s bloated infrastructure - grown fat on managerial complacency and excessively rigid employment practices - has forced it to announce the loss of 48,000 of its 230,000-strong workforce over two years.

Add to those woes a narrowly and expensively averted strike over the new machine operators’ contract which takes effect this month, plus a potentially crippling racial discrimination suit that began with a handful of African-American employees and has now spread to the corridors of the Department of Labor in Washington. Lawsuits have also been filed by two former Boeing employees alleging that, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the company sacrificed safety and manufacturing quality to speed production - allegations that the company has robustly denied.

Born: October 1, 1881 Detroit, Michigan Died: September 28, 1956 Seattle, Washington Founder, The Boeing Company

William Boeing. Reproduced by permission of AP/Wide World Photos.

In the early years of aviation, many young mechanics and engineers built their own "flying machines" and formed their own companies. Only a handful of those companies exist today. The largest in the world was founded by William Boeing, whose quest for new ideas and determination to overcome difficulties lived on at his company long after he retired.

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Boeing focused on building bigger and better planes, but he also promoted airplane travel for carrying goods and passengers around the world. In addition, his company's planes played a part in winning World War II (1939-45) for the United States and its allies; the Boeing Company continues to provide the U.S. military with a wide range of aircraft and other defense products.