Aviation News, Boeing, Airbus

By Chris Grenz

The Capital-Journal

The state could issue up to $500 million in bonds to help Boeing Wichita land an aircraft manufacturing contract under one of several bills signed into law Wednesday by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.

Under the bill, Boeing would pay off all of the bonds plus interest using revenue generated through the sale of airplane parts and through withholding taxes from the payroll of up to 4,000 employees assigned to the new project.

The bill is designed to bolster the Wichita plant’s chances of being selected to assemble parts of the new super-efficient 7E7, Boeing’s next-generation jetliner.

“What we do today in Wichita we do better than anyone else in the world,” said Bill Jarrell, a Boeing lobbyist. “Now, with this act, you put together a complete package that just makes Kansas so attractive for this work.”

THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL

An attorney who led the charge in forcing large increases in public school spending talked privately at least four times during the past seven years with some of the same people he was suing.

Schools for Fair Funding attorney Alan Rupe said the conversations with members of the Kansas State Board of Education were innocent and didn’t breach any attorney ethical rules.

But the scenario troubled school board attorney Dan Biles, who said he wasn’t aware of the conversations until he was asked about them last week by a Capital-Journal reporter.

“I’ll have to admit, I’m not real excited about opposing counsel talking to my clients,” he said.

According to attorney billing information obtained by The Topeka Capital-Journal, Rupe spoke with or e-mailed on four occasions members of the Kansas State Board of Education, which was a defendant in the school finance lawsuit. Rupe said he didn’t seek permission from Biles.

For his part, Biles noted state attorney ethical rules that prohibit lawyers on one side of a lawsuit from talking with the clients on the other, unless the opposing attorney grants permission.

The Associated Press

WICHITA — Boeing didn’t violate workplace standards in the April death of a plant worker who was pinned by a large overhead door, federal investigators said.

Ronald Dyke, 45, who weighed527 pounds and was confined to a motorized scooter, suffocated when he was pinned under a garage-type door at the Wichita plant, his autopsy showed.

Sensors on the ground near the steel door opened and closed it, but Tom Morrison, assistant director of the Wichita OSHA office, said a timer set to quickly close the door pinned Dyke in the scooter.

Our company, a small builder of custom and standard machine tools, has been in business since 1972. We started out as a manufacturer’s representative, went into machine tool rebuilding, took up the manufacture of gantry robots and automatic toolchangers, and finally evolved into building machine tools.

In 1991 we had an internal need to manufacture a family of long structural parts. We required a fast, nimble machine tool that could cost-effectively make long parts from both extruded-aluminum profiles and long fabrications made of welded steel. To do the job, we developed a machine with very long X-axis travel, intending only to use it in-house.

Favorable comments from visitors to our plant led us to believe there was a market for a bigger, faster machine of this type. We developed a larger, enhanced version that we called a “High Velocity” Machining Center-because of its high feed and rapid rates. We began selling it in 1992, focusing our marketing efforts-as much by chance as by design-on special machine tool applications in the aerospace industry.

Finding out about projects is one of the hardest tasks faced by a small company that wants to do business with the aerospace giants. Companies like Boeing don’t generally reveal information about new programs. Traditionally they tend to purchase equipment from long-time suppliers with whom they are comfortable.

Sometimes, however, companies do alter the way they do business, and that happened at Boeing in the summer of 1992. Boeing was searching for new ideas and machining systems that best fit their concept for the accurate assembly of airplane floor grid structures, dubbed “AFG.” Also, Boeing had recently introduced the concept of using buying teams to purchase capital equipment. To get the project started, the company held a vendor conference, open to all interested parties. Seventeen firms attended, and we were one of them.