Dive Brief:
- Boeing CEO and President Kelly Ortberg announced on Monday that the plane manufacturer will invest $1 billion in its Wichita, Kansas, facilities over the next three years, according to a company LinkedIn post.
- The funds will be used to upgrade factories, expand worker training and bolster the company’s manufacturing system in preparation to increase production rates, as well as deliver “safe, quality” planes to its customers, according to a fact sheet.
- The investment came months after Boeing completed its $8.3 billion acquisition of former fuselage supplier Spirit AeroSystems in December 2025.
Dive Insight:
Additionally, Boeing partnered with Wichita State University’s Campus of Applied Sciences and Technology to build a new training facility.
The 35,000-square-foot Boeing Workforce Training Center will include classrooms, specialized training labs and employee testing and assessment areas, according to the school’s May 8 press release. The center will serve as the centralized training hub for Boeing’s Wichita-area workforce with the capacity to support “thousands of trainees” yearly.
The training center is expected to open by the end of 2026, and the initial program is planned for spring 2027 to assess training tracks, space use and potential expansion opportunities.
Boeing CFO Jesus Malave said on a February earnings call that the company expects to spend nearly $4 billion in 2026, including roughly $1 billion associated with the incorporation of Spirit AeroSystems.
Boeing will spend more cash as it focuses on the Wichita plants’ operational performance in the next year and beyond, Malave said on an April 22 earnings call.
“We’ll start to see that improve with the benefit of performance and productivity, as well as synergy capture,” Malave said.
The company is “very pleased” with Spirit AeroSystems’ performance and rate increases, Ortberg said on the first quarter earnings call. Still, Boeing needs to see some improvements, he added.
“But everything’s tracking to our plan, and I would say the integration has gone well so far,” Ortberg said. “So, things are looking up with our Spirit integration.”
Boeing has gradually increased production of its commercial airplanes at its Washington facilities over the past year, following a tumultuous 2024 in which a mid-exit door plug on an Alaska Airlines Max 737 blew out in midair.
The incident led the Federal Aviation Administration to heavily scrutinize Boeing’s then fuselage supplier Spirit AeroSystems’ safety management system and manufacturing process, capping Boeing’s 737 production at 38 planes a month. Since the Alaska Airlines incident, Boeing has spent billions of dollars addressing its production woes, including the acquisition of Spirit AeroSystems.
In October 2025, the FAA agreed to increase 737 production from 38 to 42 planes per month, and the program has been stabilized at 42 during Q1, Ortberg said in an April 22 earnings call. The company aims to increase its monthly production rate to 47 in the summer and to 52 later as it continues to focus on “safety, quality and performance,” he added.
Other steps Boeing is taking to prepare for the 47-a-month ramp-up include readying a new production line at its commercial plane facility in Everett, Washington, which is expected to open this summer.
Dubbed the “North Line,” it will expand capacity for single-aisle production, enabling Boeing to better address market demand, according to an April 7 press release. The North Line will initially focus on manufacturing three 737 models, replicating the build process used at the Renton factory.
“I recently walked the factory, where I saw construction complete and tooling in place,” Ortberg said on the Q1 call. “Our teams setting up the line are eager to get started, and we started hiring and training. Employees for the North Line will complete structured on-the-job training, which will pair new mechanics with experienced teammates from our existing Renton line.”
While Boeing’s safety management system and manufacturing process have improved at its commercial plane operations, the company is not free from scandal. The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers union has called on Boeing to conduct a transparent investigation into member Daniel Lussier’s death after he fell at the company’s Wichita site.
“The results of Brother Lussier’s autopsy confirm that a workplace accident contributed to his death. That demands answers,” Craig Martin, the union’s southern territory general VP, said in a statement. “We will be pushing to ensure it is conducted with the seriousness that Daniel’s family and our members deserve. We will investigate whether proper safety policies and procedures were in place, whether they were followed, and what corrective actions are required.”
Boeing did not immediately respond to requests for comment on IAM’s statement. However, the company is continuing its investigation into Lussier’s workplace incident “with a commitment to understand exactly what happened and take any actions to help prevent it in the future,” a spokesperson said to local station 12 News.
