Boeing Air Force One Work in Texas Stirs U.S. Concern

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-14/boeing-air-force-one-work-in-texas-stirs-u-s-concern.html

Boeing Co. (BA) risks a shortage of experienced employees to maintain Air Force One, the jumbo jet that flies the U.S. president, as the company shifts the work to Texas from Kansas, according to an Air Force letter.

Building a qualified staff in San Antonio, either with new hires or personnel transfers, “is one of the most important aspects of the move yet least successful to date,” the Air Force wrote to Boeing in a July 30 letter obtained by Bloomberg News from a person who isn’t authorized to comment publicly.

The maintenance, done under contract, is being sent to Texas as part of Boeing’s Jan. 4 plan to shut its 83-year-old operations in Wichita, Kansas, as U.S. defense spending shrinks. Mechanics and other Air Force One specialists must have five years’ experience on that jet or on comparable special-mission planes, wrote Margaret Wright, an Air Force contracting officer.