As Boeing looks to buy back Spirit AeroSystems Wichita plant, bitter memories resurface | Opinion

As Spirit AeroSystems and Boeing Co. engage in talks for Boeing to re-acquire what was once its Wichita plant, let me take you back to one of the most emotionally wrenching days I ever had to cover as a journalist here.

It was Saturday, March 21, 2005, to be exact.

It was a day I spent sitting on porches in south Wichita with Boeing employees as DHL Express delivered packages carrying news of whether they should report to work the Monday after Boeing divested itself of its Wichita plant.

I remember watching that bright yellow DHL truck as it moved down the street, stopping at every few houses to deliver those packages.

And I remember the tears of the displaced workers, who were generally older and better paid after spending decades sweating and bleeding for Boeing — and thinking that their company had their back.

Workers like Johnnie D. Jones, a 32-year Boeing employee who wept when he got the letter from Mid-Western Aircraft Systems, the placeholder name for what had been Boeing’s Wichita division, later renamed Spirit AeroSystems.

“We regret to inform you that you will not receive an employment offer from Mid-Western Aircraft Systems at this time,” Jones’ termination letter said. “Thank you for your interest in the new company and for participating in the employment process.”

Jones, 60, had been a dedicated soldier of the Cold War. He started with Boeing in 1972, refitting and modernizing B-52 bombers, a key element of the U.S. nuclear deterrent force that kept the Soviet Union in check.

He suspected he was on the chopping block after he was abruptly transferred from the military division, which Boeing didn’t sell, to a low-level job in the civilian aircraft plant that was being sold to Onex Corp., a Canadian investment firm that acted as the middleman to do Boeing’s dirty work.

The underlying reason for the sale was that Boeing wanted to cut costs by abrogating its labor contracts with its Wichita workforce. The sale gave Onex a free hand to make them all reapply for their jobs, shedding the higher-paid line workers and renegotiating contracts with the survivors.

It wasn’t long until the successor company started pestering the Legislature for job-training money to prepare workers for its factory floor. As I watched that unfold in Topeka, I remember thinking to myself, “You had a trained workforce — what did you do with it?”

Point of interest: Onex made $3.2 billion on its Wichita adventure from 2005 to 2014, when it sold off its last remaining stake in Spirit.

It’s been as shameless an exercise in corporate greed and callousness as I’ve ever seen, and I covered the demise of the aircraft industry in Southern California, which crashed and burned after the Soviet Union ceased to exist.

Now, 19 years later, the sins of the past are on approach at Boeing.

It’s a truism in any industry that rampant cost-cutting sooner or later leads to degradation of product quality.

If you’re making picnic coolers or car stereos, two other things that Wichita used to be famous for, the consequences aren’t all that severe.

But when you make airplanes, every single working part has to be right every single time, or people can die.

Spirit’s signature product is the fuselage for the troubled 737 Max jet.

Right now, 171 of those planes are grounded after an Alaska Airlines jet made an emergency landing when a plug that was installed in place of an optional door blew out of the side of the aircraft in mid-flight.

It was terrifying and traumatizing for the passengers, but we can be thankful that the seat belt light was on and none of them were killed.

That incident followed other quality issues coming out of the Spirit plant, including misdrilled holes in pressure bulkheads that were discovered last year and are the subject of an ongoing class-action lawsuit. That followed revelations of problems with tail fittings for the plane.

For Boeing, the Alaska Airlines blowout was the latest in a series of quality control fails, the most serious being the mass grounding of 737 Max planes from March 2019 to November 2020, after botched software in overseas airliners caused two crashes that killed 346 people.

Boeing, you’ve got a long way to go to get your mojo back. Buying back the Wichita plant would be a start, but it’s only a start.

What you’re really going to need going forward is skilled and conscientious line workers who care about quality, do things right, and are confident enough to speak up when something goes wrong — guys like Johnnie D. Jones.

But it won’t be him. He died in 2009, four years after you sent the DHL truck to his house.