Boeing says state will join airplane business

HUNTSVILLE - Alabama plays a big role in Boeing rocket and missile production but only a tiny one in developing the aerospace giant's airplanes.

But there will be more opportunities for Alabama getting involved with the company's airplanes as that business grows, the top man over Boeing's commercial airlines division said Monday.

"Alabama is one of the biggest relationships that we have in the United States in aerospace," said Alan Mulally, president and chief executive officer of Boeing Commercial Airplanes.

Mulally was in Huntsville on Monday to talk to about 200 government and business leaders and Alabama-based Boeing aerospace suppliers.

The world's largest maker of commercial and military aircraft has 3,349 employees in Alabama, working mostly on military missile and NASA rocket programs. Boeing also buys more than $510 million a year in services or products from 375 suppliers or vendors in Alabama.

Among Boeing's Huntsville work force are 80 engineers working on the new 787 Dreamliner, a family of three technologically advanced airliners the company will begin delivering to customers in 2008. The company also has 20 engineers working on a project to develop submarine hunters for the Navy, using 737 commercial airliners.

Mulally did not say whether any new airplane-related jobs would be coming to Alabama. But he said those projects, plus others like the replacement of the 737 airliner around 2015 to 2017, will mean the company will need "dynamite, qualified skilled and motivated employees and partners."

One Huntsville company, PPG Aerospace, is already playing a role in development of the 787 Dreamliner.

PPG Aerospace was selected by Boeing last year to provide windows for the Dreamliner that will be the first dimmed electronically by passengers.

Design and program management is being handled in Huntsville with up to 12 people working on it, a PPG spokesman said. Production of the windows will be at a subcontractor plant in Michigan, he said.

The windows, which also will be 65 percent larger, are among a number of innovations to improve fuel efficiency and passenger comfort being incorporated into the Dreamliner. New technology in the Dreamliner will include electronic systems to monitor the health of the airplane. The plane will be built with lightweight composite material and alloys and a new engine. And the design will allow for more overhead storage, more space for passengers, new air purification systems, and lower cabin altitude of 6,000 feet that will give passengers 8 percent more oxygen.

"I think it's going to be the single biggest improvement in reducing jet lag than has ever been made in commercial aviation," Mulally said.

E-mail: kfaulk@bhamnews.com