Boeing exec sees bright future for state

MOSES LAKE — Despite not knowing what will become of the old Boeing hangar at the Moses Lake International Airport, a senior official with the Chicago-based company said Boeing still intends to use the facility for flight testing.

“We’re going to start flight-testing the new [KC-46] tanker here,” Susan Champlain, director of government operations for Boeing, said during a luncheon Friday sponsored by the Grant County Economic Development Council.

Champlain was in Moses Lake as part of a statewide tour of chambers of commerce and Rotary Clubs to highlight the company’s role as the state’s largest private employer and the United States’ largest single exporter.

According to Champlain, half of Boeing’s global workforce of 160,000 people are employed in Washington — mostly in the Puget Sound area, where the company’s manufacturing hub is centered. However, Boeing has five suppliers and employs 87 people in the central Washington region.

Champlain said the company anticipates that airlines and governments will buy nearly 40,000 passenger airplanes over the next 30 years — an expected $6 trillion in sales. By far the bulk of that demand will be for longer-range, single aisle passenger jets like Boeing’s 737 series, with more than a third of those sales expected to go to Asia.

“Airlines are buying them because they can fly far and are efficient,” she said. “Small planes that fly long distances are a great thing for airlines, and the faster we can build them, the better for us.”

Boeing is set to increase production of 737-class passenger jets from the current 42 per month to 57 per month in 2019.

Champlain also said that a number of smaller airplane manufacturers — Bombardier in Canada and Embaer in Brazil, as well as companies in China and Japan — are making forays into the market for 737-sized airplanes, further tightening prices in an already competitive market.

More sales mean that Boeing’s emerging competitors will get better at making and selling passenger jets.

“So we have to get better too,” Champlain said.

Champlain made a case for the extension of Boeing’s tax credits — originally scheduled to end in 2020, but extended to 2040 because of the 777-X project — noting that in addition to the $300 million in taxes Boeing paid to Washington in 2015, the state also paid $13 billion in wages and other benefits to its employees in the same year.

Boeing also invested $1.3 billion to build carbon fiber composite wings in Everett so that the entire 777-X is built in Washington — a requirement when the legislature extended the tax credits.

However, Champlain said the company remains opposed to further conditions for the tax credit, such a guaranteed employment for a certain number of workers at Boeing.

“That’s not helpful,” she said. “That makes it difficult to run a business and make business decisions.”

Despite any difficulties the company faces in Olympia, Champlain believes that Boeing’s future in Washington — the state where the company was founded 100 years ago — is secure.

“We think our future is bright here,” she said. “Sales are going pretty well. We will thrive here in Washington.”

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at countygvt@columbiabasinherald.com.