Breaking News: SPEEA and Boeing reaches 4 year contract deal

Just out on the newswires: SPEEA says that they reached a 4 year contract with Boeing. Details tonight.

The Seattle P-I also has the story here.

2008 Presidential Elections

BREAKING: 787 not to fly in '08

This is breaking news that just came out on the newswires. Boeing announced that the 787 first flight will not take place by the end of the 4th quarter 2008. Boeing doesn't yet have a new timeline regarding the 787. This was reported by Vyonne Leach in response to questions and reported on Bloomberg. Read the Bloomberg story here.

This is on top of the news earlier today that Boeing found that about 3% of the fasteners on all four Dreamliners under final assembly were incorrectly installed. Read that report here and here.

Aviation Centers and museums

The former Grumman facilities at Bethpage

Richard Aboulafia wrote a great piece on his web site describing how aviation centers have disappeared and provides a convincing story of how commercial aircarft manufacturing can disappear from the Seattle area.

He uses the Long Island region (where I live) as an example. All that's left from Long Island's aviation tradition are a few museums and dilapidated buildings like the one's in Bethpage, NY. I live a couple miles away from Grumman's former industrial campus (in Bethpage) that and there is another one few miles away at Republic Airport in Farmingdale, NY which was the factory site of Republic Aircraft which built the P-47, F-105 and the A-10. There's a small museum there now. Will the IAM (and SPEEA) turn Everett and Renton into aviation museums. Looks like they've started that process. Read Richard's article here.