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Vought’s North Charleston plant completes first 787 fuselage section
By Dan McCue
Staff Writer
Workers at Vought Aircraft Industries’ North Charleston plant completed their first composite sections for the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, and paused just long enough Tuesday afternoon to celebrate the 38-foot-long piece of high-tech aircraft technology in a Web cast to their colleagues at the company’s headquarters in Dallas.
Later today a custom-made transporter will carry the assembly, which is comprised of two separate sections making up the last passenger seating area of the aircraft and its first cargo hold, about 200 yards to Global Aeronautica, Vought’s joint venture with Italian aerospace company Alenia Aeronautica.
There it will be wrapped and prepared for shipping before being loaded onto the specially designed cargo carrier, the Boeing Dreamlifter, and flown to Everett, Wash., to be joined to the other sections of the aircraft.
Although Boeing, which oversees cargo flights between its contracting facilities, is tight-lipped about the Dreamlifter’s schedule, Vought official said they expect the aft fuselage to leave the Lowcountry by the end of the week.
“Today is an historic milestone for Vought,” said Ted Perdue, vice president of Vought’s 787 Division. “Our company hasn’t done anything on this scale in quite some time, and I couldn’t be prouder of our team.”
Boeing currently has more than 550 orders for the Dreamliner, making it the most successful launch of a new commercial aircraft in history. This first section will comprise about 23% of a 787 that will be delivered to Japan’s All-Nippon Airways on July 8.
The sheer volume of orders to date and those expected to come in the future guarantee a bright future for the plant, Perdue said.
“A lot of customers means a lot of jobs to come here to the Lowcountry for years to come,” he said.
About 145 people at the North Charleston facility had a direct hand in building the section, as did hundreds of engineers at Vought’s headquarters, said Lynne Warne, the spokeswoman for the plant.
Currently those workers, almost all of them hired locally and trained at Trident Technical College, are at various stages of completing four more fuselage sections.
When the 342,000-square-foot plant reaches full production in 2011, an estimated 375 people will report to work at the facility each day, working in one of a projected 20 assembly bays, behind the scenes at the massive autoclave in which the composite parts are cast or in any one of a score of heavy equipment stations.
While Vought has more than 30 years experience in dealing with composite materials, mostly through its work on military aircraft, Perdue’s been impressed with the high quality of the composite materials being produced at the plant since it opened for business in June 2006, he said.
The aft fuselage, known as section 47, measures 19 feet in diameter and is 23 feet long. It is the last passenger section of the 787. Section 48, measuring 14 feet in diameter and 15 feet in length, includes a pressure bulkhead and is the first cargo hold section of the aircraft.
Whereas Vought assembled these two components in its building, in the future they’ll be sent separately to the Global Aeronautica building for assembly. They’ll then be sent on to a new, smaller building on the Vought campus adjacent to Charleston International Airport to be painted the colors of the airline awaiting delivery.
Asked if he envisions further expansion of the industrial campus, Perdue said that’s something he would very much like to see, given the fact that North Charleston and the Lowcountry in general have proven to be a great places to live and work.
“Right now, the footprint of our existing buildings and parking lots and the like only covers about 100 of the 300 acres of this site, and a number of our suppliers have already expressed an interest in being located closer to our facility,” he said.
“Another possibility is you might see more Vought buildings rise here over time. While I think we’ve already got all the buildings we need for the 787 project, I could envision our opening more facilities here as we garner contracts for other projects.”
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