Aviation expert says Boeing is using ‘economic blackmail’ against Washington

Boeing announced Wednesday that much of the detailed design work for the soon-to-be-released 777X will be done outside of Washington.

But what does that really mean for future Puget Sound work on the airplane? And does it signal that Boeing plans to build the plane somewhere other than Everett?

This is not the first time that Boeing has left Puget Sound out of the detail design work of an airplane. Most of the detailed design for the 787 was done in Japan and Italy.

In announcing this decision, Boeing was clear that it wanted to do more of that work on the 777X in-house so this plane would not experience the same out-sourcing issues the Dreamliner did.

The work will be done in South Carolina, Alabama, California, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and Russia.

The announcement doesn’t mean that no engineering work on the plane would be done here in Puget Sound. Boeing says it just hasn’t made any decisions on Washington’s involvement in the plane.

Aviation analyst Scott Hamilton says one thing is clear from this announcement, “This is just as clear an indication as you could possibly have that Boeing is continuing the war on SPEEA, the engineering union, that it’s had underway all year long,” he said.

Boeing has said it will get rid of 1,700 engineering positions in Puget Sound this year. Many engineers have already moved to other facilities in other states.

Hamilton also sees this announcement as a high-stakes game of chicken that Boeing is playing with the states vying to build the 777X, to try and squeeze out better tax and incentive packages.

“This may be just another maneuver to prompt the Governor’s Office and the Legislature to come up with more economic incentives,” Hamilton said. Economic blackmail is how Hamilton describes it.

He said this announcement also sends another message to Olympia that Boeing is shopping this program to the highest bidder. “We cannot count on the prospect of that airplane being built here,” Hamilton said.

While it makes the most sense to build the 777X in Everett where the line is mature, production of the plane likely won’t start until 2017 or 2018, giving other possible production sites plenty of time to get up to speed.

Hamilton puts Washington’s chances of building the plane at 50-50.

He said Governor Inslee and state aerospace director Alex Pietsch need to up their efforts. “If I were Alex and Jay Inslee, I’d be on the next airplane to Chicago to have a sit-down with [Boeing CEO Jim] McNerney.”

The governor hopes to have an incentive plan to offer Boeing before the company heads to Dubai in three weeks, where it is expected to formally announce the launch of the 777X.