Boeing's new 777x aircraft will be built in five locations instead of Seattle as originally planned the company said in a memo Reuters reported Wednesday.
"We are studying our options on build work for the 777X, but no decisions have been made at this point," Doug Alder, Boeing spokesman told Reuters.
The new aircraft will be designed in Charleston, S.C., Huntsville, Ala., Long Beach, Calif., Philadelphia and St. Louis the memo said Reuters reported.
The company is also going to build the aircrafts at its design center in Moscow, and improve on mistakes it made with the 787 and 747 planes. The company has not decided where to construct the plane, however, but it has bought 270 acres of land next to its factory in North Charleston, S.C. Reuters reported.
"(The new structure of design) will allow for an efficient use of resources and enable Boeing to resolve design issues effectively the first time," the memo said according to Reuters. "...At this time, no decisions have been made about 777X design or build in Puget Sound. It doesn't mean the Puget Sound is out of the running, but it puts pressure on them. That may be the point."
The company may also craft parts of the plane at its headquarters there.
"Puget Sound is Boeing's center of experience in commercial aircraft design," Ray Goforth, executive director of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA) told Reuters. As engineering tasks are shared with other talented engineering groups, we fully expect Puget Sound to play the key integrating role needed to avoid a replication of the problems experienced by the 787 program. While you don't want to spread yourself too thin, you never really want to have all your eggs in one basket. All else being equal I can see the merit to some further diversification of production lines away from Washington state, and particularly into South Carolina."
