Number
21
The Boeing Company
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For as long as there has been an aviation business, the Boeing name has been part of it. Just a few years after the Wright brothers made their first flight at Kitty Hawk, William Boeing attended the first American air show in Los Angeles. He immediately saw the possibilities, and over the next several years explored various facets of the exciting new industry. He rode a biplane from atop a wing, took flying lessons from an early barnstormer, and spearheaded the design of a seaplane. But when he bought an old Seattle shipyard to open an airplane manufacturing operation in 1916, his involvement became official.
Over the next eight-and-a-half decades, his Boeing Company weathered an ebb and flow that spelled the end to most of its once-mighty competitors. It did so by snagging virtually every opportunity that surfaced—from the first U.S. mail air routes, to massive military contracts, to domination of commercial aviation, to a major role in the space program. It has long been the top producer of commercial jets, and with various acquisitions also became the largest aerospace company in the world.
While cyclical downturns over the years devastated one aircraft or aerospace firm after another, Boeing battled back effectively with imagination and diversification. For example, it began United Airlines and employed the first female flight attendant and as an early global enterprise developed customers in 145 countries. Its vast litany of innovations includes aviation icons such as the B-52 bomber and 737 passenger plane (the best-selling jetliner in aviation history), along with the Lunar Orbiter and Saturn V booster (launcher of Apollo spacecraft on their journeys to the moon).
But none of the challenges Boeing has encountered provides immunity from those it faces today. In fact, with the 21st century barely underway, a European rival unveiled a superjumbo jet that siphoned attention—and sales—from Boeing’s existing alternative. Trade magazines and Seattle-area newspapers speculated that without extraordinary effort, Boeing might soon find itself the world’s number-two plane maker. Not surprisingly, Boeing prepared once again to fight back.
The Wright brothers made their historic first flight in 1903, the same year Detroit native William Boeing left Yale Engineering College to seek his fortune in the Pacific Northwest. The timber industry was red hot, and the 22-year-old quickly struck it rich in the lush forests outside Grays Harbor, Wash. After moving to Seattle, he heard about an air show in Los Angeles. Boeing attended and fell in love with what he saw, and upon his return began engaging a Navy engineer named George Conrad Westervelt in endless conversations about the future of flight.
Westervelt had taken aeronautics courses at MIT, and shared Boeing’s infatuation with air travel. The two flew on an early biplane—the type requiring both pilot and passenger to sit on one wing—and pondered variations at Seattle’s University Club. Before Boeing left for California in August 1915 to take flying lessons, he asked his friend to design a more practical craft. Construction on the resultant twinfloat seaplane, dubbed B&W for the pair’s last names, began soon after his return.
Boeing built a combination hangar-boathouse beside Lake Union. During the first half of 1916 began construction on two B&W seaplanes. The Navy sent Westervelt east before they were done, so Boeing finished on his own. On June 15, he took the plane nicknamed “Bluebill” on its maiden flight when the scheduled pilot didn’t arrive on time. Exactly one month later, he incorporated his airplane manufacturing business as the Pacific Aero Products Company. He bought 998 of the 1,000 shares and moved operations to the former Health’s shipyard on the Duwamish River. A year later, he changed the name of his business to Boeing Airplane Company.
Bursting with optimism over his new enterprise, Boeing assembled a 28-person staff of pilots, carpenters, seamstresses and other specialized workers. The B&W didn’t sell, but World War I was underway and for the first time the United States was using airplanes in battle. Boeing knew the Navy would need planes for training, and believed his Model C filled the bill. Navy officials agreed following a Florida test flight, and ordered 50. Boeing expanded his payroll to 337 to build them, but—in a pattern that would become uncomfortably common in the years ahead—saw the order cut in half as the war drew to a close. To keep afloat, he had workers switch to building furnishings for local shops as well as a type of flat-bottomed boat called a sea sled.
Boeing wasn’t through with planes, though. In 1919 he and a pilot flew 60 letters from British Columbia to Seattle, marking the first international air mail delivery into the United States. He built many new commercial aircraft models over the next few years, including the first to fly over Mount Ranier. The Army Air Service also placed a few healthy orders for fighter biplanes, but Boeing knew that he had to come up with a solid plan for producing and selling a steady number of products to a wide variety of customers if he hoped to survive. To that end he bought the Stearman Aircraft Company in Kansas, and opened Boeing Aircraft of Canada and the Boeing School of Aeronautics in California. And in 1927—the same year Charles Lindbergh made the first solo nonstop flight from New York to Paris—Boeing contracted with the U.S. Postal Department to run the coveted airmail route from Chicago to San Francisco.
At last, Boeing could efficiently use his planes while promoting them to others. To operate a route that could effectively carry passengers along with the mail, he founded Boeing Air Transport, the predecessor to United Airlines. Bowing to Prohibition, his wife Bertha inaugurated the first flight with orange-flavored soda water. During the following year, nearly a million pounds of mail and express packages, and almost 1,900 passengers, took the 22-and-one-half-hour trip. This helped kick start the idea of passenger air travel and incite a demand that—in conjunction with military orders and, later, space-related products—would keep Boeing on top for decades.
Much changed during ensuing years, but Boeing’s continually broadening lineup consistently dominated its fields. His companies built airplanes and parts, including engines and propellers. They delivered mail. They maintained airports. They ran airlines. When single-winged planes replaced biplanes, Boeing’s were first out of the hangar. His Yankee Clipper inaugurated regular airmail service across the Atlantic. His luxurious Stratoliner was remade as the military C-75 after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The next was the B-29, which dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Government cancellations after the war again led to massive layoffs, but this time orders for long-range civilian planes replaced them, and the company pressed on. The development of jets and a continuing demand from the defense department often kept the company going full tilt. By the time William Boeing died in 1956, his aircrafts were capable of circling the globe. And, for the first time, airlines were carrying more non-commuting passengers than trains.
The 1960s put America, and Boeing, on a new path. President Kennedy promised a man on the moon, and the company loaned the government 2,000 executives to help make it happen. Its Lunar Orbiter scouted possible landing areas and its Lunar Roving Vehicle explored the ground. Its Saturn V first-stage booster launched the Apollo craft into space.
Boeing 707s were utilized for years to transport government officials. The plane that carried the president would use the call sign “Air Force One.” In 1962, two 707s were adapted specifically for use by the president and were officially given the permanent call sign Air Force One. These models served as the presidential aircraft until 1990, when they were replaced by two new Boeing 747s.
But while it continued building more advanced airplanes, such as the 490-passenger transatlantic 747 jumbo jet, Boeing also kept hitting employment peaks and valleys. Nearly 50,000 workers were dismissed in 1970 when the United States abruptly ended its supersonic transport program. Boeing responded by diversifying yet again, this time setting up a computer services company, an irrigation project in eastern Oregon, and a desalinization plant in the Virgin Islands. It also built three huge wind turbines along the Columbia River, constructed voice scramblers for police departments, and manufactured light-rail cars for several municipalities. Obviously, the more things changed the more they stayed the same.
But Boeing has remained primarily focused on commerical aircrafts, military hardware, and various utilities related to space. Its leaders have reiterated the company’s long-term commitment to lead in all operational areas, absorbing top competitors Rockwell International in 1996, McDonnell Douglas in 1997, and the Hughes Electronics communications satellite business in early 2000. An unprecedented 40-day strike by engineers and technicians a few months later, however, badly impacted commerical and military production. It also trimmed the company’s value by $5.3 billion.
The walkout left some bitterness on both sides, but the company and its employees plunged ahead once more when it ended. Just a few weeks after the strike, Boeing announced a new way for passengers to surf the Net and check e-mail from their laptops during flight. Shortly after, though, it was shaken once again by the announcement that its arch-rival Airbus Industries had outsold it for the first time in new aircraft orders. Further, a new Airbus superjumbo jet was attracting attention and sales that previously went to Boeing’s biggest transatlantic models.
In typical Boeing fashion, the company quickly trumpeted its answer: the massive 747x Stretch. It hardly mattered that the Stretch didn’t yet exist; Boeing had pulled off much more difficult transformations in the century since its founder discovered commercial aviation.