WICHITA, Kan. — The crowd gathered at the local headquarters for Boeing was euphoric. The company had just won one of the largest military contracts in history. Thousands of the resulting jobs, Boeing had promised, would be headed here, to the sprawling manufacturing complex where residents have been building airplanes for generations.
“It’s good for Kansas, it’s good for Wichita and it’s a great day to be alive here and to profess victory,” said Senator Pat Roberts, part of the political team that spent a decade battling on behalf of the company. “Every once in a while the good guys win.”
That celebration last February was supposed to confirm this city’s enduring status as the “Air Capital of the World.” But less than a year later, on Jan. 4, Boeing executives solemnly gathered here for another announcement. The jobs would not be arriving after all, they said. Instead, they would shut down all of the company’s local operations by the end of 2013.
Barring some unexpected act of salvation, this is how Boeing leaves Wichita after eight decades as one of its biggest employers and most prestigious brands: in a trail of broken promises and bitter recriminations.
For most of the country, this is just one more plant closing, just 2,160 more lost jobs in a Midwestern city — nothing particularly dramatic in these difficult times. But the exit has been another painful blow to the city of Wichita and the airplane manufacturing industry that has sustained it, the sudden reversal of fortune only adding to the feeling of betrayal.
After waves of layoffs and threatened departures by the plane makers, there is a growing fear that this city, like so many other manufacturing centers, is at risk of losing its identity as one of those American places where people make things and are paid well for it.
David Robertson, who has worked at Boeing for 35 of his 54 years, following his father into the business, said he suspected that when the jobs head elsewhere his employer will miss the commitment and expertise built through company clans like his.
“What did we talk about at supper?” Mr. Robertson asked. “We talked about planes. You go to a place where people don’t have that history, where people haven’t been doing it for generations, and to them it’s just a job.”
This was a fading cow town when a few eyes-to-the-skies businessmen helped transform Wichita into the largest city in Kansas and a major aviation manufacturing hub. Cessna, Beech and Lear are a few whose names still grace planes made here. The city still makes almost half the general aviation airplanes in the world. And Wichita is where Air Force One goes for a tuneup.
Some believe the departure of Boeing will be damaging only symbolically because the company sold off its much larger commercial division here, now called Spirit Aerosystems. But others, worried about an eroding identity and a declining share of the market, ask whether this time is different.
“This is not a cyclical thing,” said Bob Brewer, president of the local chapter of the aerospace engineering union. “This isn’t Boeing cycling down. This is Boeing cycling out.”
Boeing, which is based in Chicago, anchored itself to the community when it took over the local Stearman Aircraft Company in 1929. With a focus on building larger planes for commercial travel and military use, as opposed to the small-plane makers that dominate here, Boeing gained a reputation for generous compensation and opportunities for career growth.
Today, a typical airplane worker here earns about $71,000 a year, about 80 percent higher than the average income in the city, according to the Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City.
A Boeing employee for four decades, Steve Rooney, who runs the local machinists’ union, joined the company just like his father and grandfather. His daughter worked at Boeing as well, until she was laid off several years ago.
“How can you tell people, ‘Learn the trade, get involved, there is a future here’?” Mr. Rooney asked. “Is there?” He nodded his head and let the question linger.
This scene — a major local airplane maker departing while citing costs — almost played out a year ago. Hawker Beechcraft was on the verge of moving to Louisiana before the company agreed to take a smaller incentive package to remain for at least a decade, embracing what the company calls “the stay and make it work strategy.”
W. W. Boisture Jr., the chairman and chief executive of the company, which cut its local work force by nearly half, said the decision was between “a very attractive economic offer” and “a multigenerational work force that has been committed to this company for decades.” He did not pretend that the decision was easy.
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