Print edition: 
Boeing plans to increase the amount it spends with Kansas suppliers by 50 percent over the next three years, a company official said this week.
The company plans to increase its spending from $3.2 billion to $4.8 billion by 2014 or 2015, said Boeing spokesman Forrest Gossett. Kansas currently ranks fourth among the 50 states for Boeing’s supply dollars.
The increased spending, Gossett said, drives home a misperception he would like to clear up: Boeing is closing its Wichita facility, but it’s not leaving the state.
“Reports say we are abandoning Kansas, and that’s not the case,” he said.
“This is a great place to do business and to spend our supplier dollars. We really believe it’s important to tell the community that Kansas is vital to Boeing.”
Earlier this month, Boeing announced it was closing its Wichita plant, which employs 2,160 people, and moving the work to Oklahoma City and San Antonio. Tanker work that was to have come to Wichita will now go to the Puget Sound area in Washington state.
Increased spending with suppliers will be good news for Wichita, where the majority of Boeing’s 475 Kansas suppliers operate.
It was Boeing that created Wichita’s network of machine shops, said Don McGinty, owner of McGinty Machine. The businesses that sprung up now build parts for all the major manufacturers in town.
“Boeing and Cessna and Beech, those three companies are what made the city,” McGinty said. “Boeing was a big part of it.”
McGinty’s father founded McGinty Machine, which manufactures precision machined aircraft parts, in 1948.
“I’m sure he was doing Boeing work from the beginning,” said McGinty, who took over the business in 1980.
In 1952, McGinty Machine was making parts for the B-52 bomber and employed 128 people working in three shifts around the clock.
“There was a big demand for new bombers,” he said.
Boeing remains a key part of McGinty’s business, located at 222 N. Hydraulic. About 50 percent to 60 percent of the parts it produces end up on Boeing airplanes.
“They’ve been good for us,” McGinty said.
McGinty is hopeful he will get work on Boeing’s aerial refueling tanker for the U.S. Air Force. The company’s name was included in a Boeing news release listing some of Wichita’s tanker suppliers, but no contracts have been signed.
“Boeing probably has me on the list, but they haven’t made contact with me,” he said.
Gossett said the company hasn’t made direct contact with tanker suppliers in Wichita because the program is in the early stages of development.
“It’s not unexpected,” Gossett said.
