Boeing Canada workers to see their labour take flight

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This article was published 13/07/2017 (3185 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For more than 10 years, workers at Boeing Canada’s composite parts plant in Winnipeg have been making parts for the Boeing 787 Dreamliner series of planes.

But today, workers will get their first chance to see their handiwork up close and personal.

The 787 has been flying for several years — there are 565 delivered and another 1,155 on order — but it so happens that there aren’t any regular schedules that have them landing in Winnipeg.

So Boeing will fly a 787-8 test plane into the Richardson International Airport and the company has organized for the entire workforce of close to 1,500 to view the plane.

“It’s in recognition of all the hard work our people do every day,” said Nick Bevilacqua, Boeing Canada’s director of business operations. “We build a lot of parts for this plane. This is to show people what they built and how it goes on the airplane.”

When Boeing announced the creation of the 787 Dreamliner in 2003, the Winnipeg plant was one of only five company-owned sites selected to design and manufacture the parts. It designs and builds several large composite parts for the 787 — the first commercial jet built with composite materials as the primary material in the construction of its airframe — including the main landing-gear doors and the wing-to-body fairings.

Terry Trupp, Boeing Canada’s manager of communications and community relations, said, “Our people build the parts, but most never get to chance to see them up close on the plane. This will give them all the chance to actually see it and kick the tires.”

Boeing’s Winnipeg plant — the largest composite manufacturing facility in the country and Boeing’s largest facility in Canada, by far —makes 541 unique composite parts and assemblies for all seven of Boeing’s jetliner series.

But 787 work now is responsible for the largest volume of work in the Murray Park location, about 43 per cent of the total.

Although the Dreamliner hit some snags in the early days of its production, the 10-year-old plane is now firmly ensconced in the aviation marketplace.

In Canada, Air Canada flies eight of the 242-seat 787-8 Dreamliners and 21 of the 290-seat 787-9. Earlier this year, WestJet ordered up to 20 787-9 Dreamliners with an agreement for 10 to be delivered between the first quarter of 2019 and December 2021, with options for an additional 10. The latest version, the 787-10, is now doing test flights. It is slightly longer than the other two with seating capacity for 330.

The Dreamliner boasts a 20 per cent better fuel efficiency over the planes they will be replacing. But maybe more impressive for the flying public is that the planes are designed in a way that many passengers on the 787 say they do not experience jet lag.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca