Textron Aviation sorts through plans for plants after Beech acquisition

A year after Textron Inc. acquired Beechcraft and began integrating it and Cessna into Textron Aviation, the company has a plan going forward for its facilities in east and west Wichita.

And those plans, said a Textron Aviation executive, don’t include selling, leasing or shuttering its tens of thousands of square feet of buildings in Wichita.

“We do not plan on disposing any of it,” said David Rosenberg, Textron Aviation’s vice president of strategic planning and integration. “We’re going to retain all of it.”

Last March, Providence, R.I.-based Textron closed on its $1.4 billion acquisition of Beechcraft Corp.

The deal, announced in December 2013, included Beechcraft’s facilities on east Central, its service and support business and its product line of King Air turboprops, Baron and Bonanza piston aircraft, T-6 military aircraft as well as the Hawker 4000 and Premier IA business jet type certificates.

At the closing of the deal, Textron Aviation was created, encompassing Beechcraft and Cessna product lines.

A big part of the integration involved melding the two airplane makers’ work forces. Included in that integration was last April’s layoff of about 750 full-time and contract employees at Cessna and Beechcraft — about 575 in Kansas – and a new, unified contract with Machinists members in September.

Now, Textron Aviation has determined how and what it will do with its Beechcraft facilities, as well as the Cessna facilities, most of which are located east of Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport on the city’s west side.

‘Facility optimization’

There had been some question about the fate of parts of Beechcraft’s plant — now called the Textron Aviation East Campus — following the acquisition.

The main Cessna campus is now called Textron Aviation West Campus.

The fate of the east campus had some questions because after the Beechcraft acquisition, 17 acres of Beechcraft land on the northeast corner of Kellogg and Webb was sold to warehouse shopping club chain Costco, which is building its first area store there. And after its bankruptcy in Beechcraft had stopped making the Hawker 4000 and Premier business jets, aircraft whose fuselages were fashioned from composites using special, multi-million dollar equipment and autoclaves in its Plant III building.

Under the “facility optimization” plan, Textron Aviation has designated the Plant III building as its Composite Center of Excellence. That means that building will be the hub for all of its composite work. Composites are used throughout Textron Aviation aircraft, officials said. The company doesn’t completely rule out composite fuselage aircraft as a possibility, slim as it might be.

“I would point out that our most recent product announcements have metal fuselages,” Textron Aviation spokeswoman Nicole Alexander said in an e-mail to The Eagle. “This does not preclude it, but would be a case-by-case consideration.”

Textron Aviation also plans to shift some of its component manufacturing from Plant I on the East Campus to its Pawnee Campus, at 5800 E. Pawnee in southeast Wichita. The company is moving machinery and workers from the East Campus to Pawnee, which it has designated as its Component Manufacturing Center of Excellence. Officials said they are not ready to get into specifics about the type of work that includes, but said that shift is expected to be completed next year.

The third piece of the facility optimization plan includes aftermarket parts distribution for Cessna and Beechcraft products. That effort includes improving its distribution at “multiple” Textron Aviation facilities in Wichita, including the East Campus. That effort is expected to be completed this year, officials said.

Rosenberg said Textron Aviation’s decision to retain and use all of its facilities is driven in large part by economics and an expectation for future growth of the company.

“For us to grow now, we don’t actually have to build new facilities,” he said.

The existing buildings provide for quick execution of new work and “saves us money,” Rosenberg added. “We don’t have to invest capital in new facilities.”

Aviation industry analyst Richard Aboulafia said the plan makes sense and is expected as part of the integration of two aircraft manufacturers.

“This is the kind of consolidation work you should be doing,” said Aboulafia, a Teal Group vice president.

Aboulafia is skeptical of a return to building composite fuselage business jets, though, because it’s not cost-effective in that sector of the market. Right now, composites make financial sense only for larger aircraft, such as commercial airliners.

“One of the lessons we’ve learned (in the industry) is you don’t go toward primary composite structures for (business) aircraft,” he said. “Those did not pay their way. Look at the four data points: the Starship, the Hawker 200 (formerly the Premier), Hawker 4000 and the Learjet 85 (Bombardier’s mid-size business jet program paused earlier this year). Those business aircraft with a primary composite structure didn’t work out so good.”

This story was originally published April 1, 2015 at 4:30 PM with the headline "Textron Aviation sorts through plans for plants after Beech acquisition."