Ingram's March 2023

AVIATION AND AEROSPACE

10,000 B-25 Mitchell bombers pro duced during the war and half of the long-range B-29s that pounded Japan into submission in 1945. The city then witnessed the pro duction of atomic-age aircraft with Boeing’s B-52 strategic bomber, which has been in service for a remarkable 70 years. Boeing also became the backbone of Wichita’s post-war civ- ilian industrial might, and its descen dants remain preeminent today. Spirit AeroSystems, calved off from Boeing in 2006, continues to be the primary buil- der of the popular 737-series commer- cial jetliner. More than 11,000 of those have been delivered worldwide since it was introduced by Boeing in 1965, and the backlog for future deliv eries is roughly 5,000. Light planes, meanwhile, evolved in tandem with commercial craft pro- duction. At their peak, Beech, Cessna, and Learjet employed more than 10,000 other workers in Wichita, and estimates suggest that for each of those jobs, another was generated in the supplier/ vendor space for those companies. Though Wichita saw an iconic brand disappear last year when Bombardier discontinued the Learjet series, the city retained project work with the company’s military work,

and was named as its North American headquarters, as well. The Knock-On Effect The thousands of assembly work ers in Wichita are just the start of the modern aerospace workforce in Kan sas. According to the Greater Wich ita partnership, an economic dev- elopment advocate for the city, plane makers have spawned a network of more than 450 precision machine shops, tool and die shops, and other subcontracting manufacturers within a 200-mile radius of the city, extend ing to the Kansas City-Topeka corri dor. Within their ranks are 18 Boeing certified gold and silver suppliers, and overall, that network feeds an aviation and manufacturing supply chain that extends around the world. Essential to that effort are the armies of engineers and engineering tech nicians. Their numbers make Wichita itself the third-largest engineering hub in the nation, according to Engi neering Daily . Even the European gi ant Airbus, Boeing’s most significant global competitor, has recognized the value of a Wichita presence, siting its Airbus Americas Engineering Cen ter there.

And to feed that stream of engineer ing talent, regional universities step up with mission-focused academic programming and research efforts. Wichita State University, in fact, is also home to the National In- stitute for Aviation Research. NAIR specializes in research and develop ment, particularly with testing and certification for airframe technolo gies. It’s a measure of NAIR’s sig nificance that its executive director is the highest-paid employee on the state payroll, well ahead of the presidents at any of the seven Reg- ents universities. Both WSU and the University of Kansas offer degrees in aerospace en- gineering, and Kansas State Univer- sity, with a separate campus in Salina dedicated to aerospace and technol ogy, also offers degree programs in aviation management and aviation mechanics. A Spirited Effort | Spirit AeroSystems, calved off of the Boeing Co.’s commercial aviation division in 2005, builds the fuselages of the 737 passenger jet series at its massive plant in Wichita. It’s the centerpiece of a plane-building economy that employs thousands directly, and many thousands more through specialized vendors and other supplier companies.

47 I ngr am ’ s

47

DestinationKansas.com

2023 Ingrams.com

Kansas’ Business Media

Regional Publications