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Boeing broke ground Friday on a $1 billion expansion of its South Carolina campus, creating more space to increase production of its widebody 787 Dreamliner.
The event — which celebrated plans to build a second final assembly building, adding 1.2 million square feet to Boeing’s plant — was distinctly political.
The theme of the day was “Boeing backs America,” with the slogan featured on a 787 on display, the roof of a nearby warehouse and flags distributed to thousands of employees who attended the event.
President Donald Trump was mentioned several times, with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent telling the crowd that Boeing and South Carolina officials were committed to “working alongside President Trump to build America’s Golden Age.”
Bessent, born and raised in South Carolina, praised the president’s efforts to increase manufacturing in America and pitch international customers on buying Boeing planes. Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg visited the Oval Office last month to award Trump the title “salesman of the year,” Bessent told the crowd, adding that “where there’s a Trump trade deal, there’s a Boeing sale.”
“This administration backs Boeing because Boeing backs America,” Bessent said. “Together, we are powering an industrial revival.”
The event emphasized what one speaker described as a sense of hometown pride" in North Charleston, where Boeing chose to expand and then consolidate its 787 operations. The decision was deeply contentious in Boeing's birthplace — Washington state — where Boeing originally built the Dreamliner in the early 2000s before closing the 787 final assembly line in Everett in 2021.
“Some questioned the decision to build airplanes here, but time and time again we’ve proven that we can do this, we can do it right and we can do it safely,” Scott Stocker, vice president and general manager of the 787 program, told employees Friday. “This team’s ability to expand our operations for the 787 was earned through skill and dedication, and we’re going to take that to the next level.”
The 787, widely considered one of the most technically advanced and safest planes flying today, was plagued with manufacturing issues in its early years. More recently, Boeing found tiny gaps at the joins in the fuselage section, a flaw that was not a safety concern but could potentially weaken the structure of the fuselage.
Of the 787’s demand, Stocker told employees, “Our customers want this airplane. … We all know how critical it is for us to expand our operation here to meet that demand.”
The $1 billion investment will create 1,000 jobs in North Charleston over the next five years, Boeing said Friday, doubling its original estimate when it announced the expansion plans in December. In addition to the second final assembly building, it will fund new facilities for parts preparation and vertical fin paint, upgrades to the existing interiors center and lots of new parking for cars and finished planes.
Once up and running around 2028, it will enable Boeing’s 787 production to push beyond 10 per month — with space to spare.
The impact in Washington
Boeing’s build-out of its South Carolina production facility comes at a cost to Washington.
The aerospace manufacturer originally built the 787 in Everett — a tumultuous beginning that earned the first Dreamliners the nickname the “terrible teens” — before expanding production to Charleston in the mid-2000s and opening a second final assembly line there in 2010.
Many saw that decision as an effort to weaken Washington’s unionized workforce, which halted 787 production in 2008 during a 57-day strike.
In 2020, Boeing announced it would consolidate all 787 work on the North Charleston campus, closing the final assembly line in Everett. Company officials said the closure was driven by the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting slowdown in air travel, meaning Boeing needed to save cash.
But some saw the move as another swipe at the union — and a big loss to Washington’s aerospace economy and future.
Jay Inslee, Washington's governor at the time, vowed to reassess the tax breaks set up to support the aerospace giant. U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen, a Democrat who still represents Everett, said he would work to bring the 787 assembly line back to Washington once the pain of the pandemic had eased.
The space in Everett that line used to fill sits mostly unused today. Boeing turned parts of its Everett plant into what it called a “shadow factory,” where it reworked some 787 planes to fix quality issues that had plagued the planes.
Boeing said in February it had completed the repairs and closed the shadow factory.
Boeing has earmarked the space for its 777X family and larger 737 MAX 10 variant — but neither program has received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to begin production and deliveries.
That has left the company with, essentially, “the world’s biggest shed” in Everett, said Nick Cunningham, an aviation analyst with Agency Partners. “It’s a very big building and … you can’t turn off the heat and the lights in one part of it.”
Last year, Boeing rejiggered its existing final assembly building in North Charleston to open a second 787 production line. That means two teams of mechanics are simultaneously moving fuselages through the process to add the vertical tail fin, wings, engines and other components to prepare planes for delivery. Boeing had been operating only one final assembly line following the closure of the Everett 787 line in 2021.
Down the line, Boeing will add a third final assembly line in the new final assembly building it broke ground for on Friday.
The six-story building will have more than 400 feet of "clear span," meaning open space with no columns, said Frank Holley, the CEO of BE&K Building Group, which is tasked with the project. That's enough space for two 787s to fit wing-to-wing, Holley said, implying Boeing would have room to expand to a fourth final assembly line.
Holley expects the skeleton of the new final assembly building will be upright in about eight months, with the project complete in three years.
Increasing 787 output
At a production rate of seven 787s per month, with plans to increase to eight and then 10 sometime next year, Boeing CEO Ortberg said the company has enough space in North Charleston now to meet its current production goals. The new facility will help it push beyond that and into "the teens," Ortberg told analysts at Boeing's quarterly earnings call in October.
"If we thought capping at 10 was as far as we go, we would not be investing in expanding Charleston," Ortberg said.
For comparison, Boeing’s European rival Airbus is producing its widebody A350 at a rate of about six per month, with plans to increase to 12, analysts say.
Bjorn Fehrm, an analyst with aviation firm Leeham News, cautioned neither manufacturer is good at sticking to those ramp-up timelines.
Boeing's three 787 models — the -8, -9 and -10 — are worth about $130 million to $169 million each, according to estimates from aviation consulting firm Avitas. The actual revenue a sale brings to Boeing changes from deal to deal.
At its peak, with final assembly lines firing in Everett and North Charleston, Boeing’s 787 production outpaced demand, both Fehrm and Cunningham said.
Even before the COVID pandemic, Boeing officials were making plans to scale back. The aerospace industry was dipping into a down-cycle, and airlines were more interested in narrowbodies for regional routes, like Boeing's 737 MAX, than massive widebody jets.
After years of suppressed production as Boeing navigated the pandemic and 787 quality issues, it now has a backlog of roughly 1,000 orders for the Dreamliner, Boeing said Friday. Just this week, Uzbekistan Airways ordered eight 787s, Air Astana from Kazakhstan ordered 15 and Somon Air from Tajikistan committed to four.
Airlines are clearly still interested in the 787, Cunningham said, but “it’s quite hard to judge what the real demand is. … By and large, demand has been supply-constrained.”
Production hurdles
Growth of the 787 and its rival A350 is held up by an unexpected regulatory hurdle: business-class seats.
As airlines vie to upgrade their cabins, one of the only ways carriers can differentiate themselves from competitors, they are touting more sophisticated features for their premium seats, like electronics and lie-flat capabilities.
That’s slowing the certification process from safety regulators, including the FAA and the European Aviation Safety Agency, and leaving some nearly finished planes parked.
“We’re continuing to struggle with seat certification,” Ortberg told analysts last month, adding that he expected it would be a pain point in the move to increase 787 production. “I think that’s going to be with us for a little bit longer.”
It’s not clear who bears the responsibility for the delay, with some falling to the seat manufacturers and some to the airlines choosing new models.
Regulatory hurdles aside, Cunningham and Fehrm said the biggest obstacle facing Boeing’s effort to increase 787 production is skilled labor.
That’s something Boeing and the entire aerospace industry have struggled with for years, particularly as experienced machinists retired at the height of the pandemic, leaving a gap in training for new hires.
“We’ve had now about five years of problems with the supply chain — various problems with quality, raw materials, electronics,” Cunningham said. “But really now it's resolved to the underlying issue, which is lack of experienced labor and the time it takes to train up new labor. …
"That’s a systemic challenge that everyone’s having.”
The problem is particularly acute in South Carolina, Fehrm said, where Boeing can’t lean on a legacy of aerospace talent like it has in Washington.
Recognizing the shutdown
As Boeing and South Carolina officials celebrated the groundbreaking Friday, the aerospace industry was plagued with other solemn reminders.
At the start of Friday's event, Boeing acknowledged a tragedy earlier this week when a UPS McDonnell Douglas cargo plane crashed and exploded after takeoff in Kentucky, killing at least 13 people.
The MD-11 cargo plane's left wing caught fire, and an engine fell off just before the crash, investigators said. Boeing, which acquired McDonnell Douglas in 1997, sent a technical team to assist the National Transportation Safety Board with the investigation, it said Friday.
The event's speakers also acknowledged the ongoing government shutdown, which has snarled travel as air traffic controllers feel the strain of weeks without pay. The Department of Transportation ordered airlines to reduce flights by 10% at 40 major hubs, including Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.
Bessent on Friday called for an end to the shutdown, warning, "We are fast approaching the busiest travel period of the year and our airports will need every available resource to keep flights running on time.
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