Long Beach is the Douglas Aircraft Company's original base of operations. Boeing inherited the site and its tens of thousands of employees when it acquired McDonnell Douglas in 1997.
It was never a good fit.
Maybe Boeing was still bitter about the decades from the early 1930s through the late 1950s when Douglas reigned supreme in commercial airliner market, largely by trumping each new Boeing product by coming out with essentially a better version of the same thing a few years later (are you listening, Airbus?).
In the past decade, Boeing has shut down the old Douglas commercial airliner factory, with the last 717s shipped out last spring. Boeing also exiled the fomer Long Beach space launcher business to the friendly, non-unionized atmosphere of Decatur, Alabama.
All that's left in Long Beach is the ever-imperiled C-17 and, until now, perhaps the fourth or fifth highest ranking executive in the Boeing heirarchy.
George Muellner, president of advance systems, was based in Long Beach, but he retires at the end of the year. Boeing announced today that Muellner, who will be missed by this blog for one, will be replaced by Darrly Davis. But Davis's office will remain in St. Louis.
That's another blow for Long Beach, whose long, slow decline as a national aerospace hub continues to be sad to witness.
Recent Comments