The C-17 will remain in San Antonio until its delivery to Qatar Emiri Air Force in early 2016.
Advertisement
The takeoff on the craft’s maiden voyage will be from Long Beach Airport, adjacent to the soon-to-be-abandoned production site, according to Boeing. The Times writes that Boeing said that it expects to lay off over 700 of its workers in Southern California.
Boeing Company has announced in a press release that its final C-17 Globemaster III military aircraft has departed the company’s plant in Long Beach, California on Sunday, November 29, 2015. However, two years ago, the company announced that not enough foreign orders came in to substantiate in maintaining the plant open, as per Military Times. However, that’s a almost 50 percent cut in the workforce in the past decade. It marked another bittersweet curtain call for the region’s once mighty aerospace industry, which has been began declining with the end of the Cold War. Some of the work has gone to other states but some of the drop is due to the end of military programs and to purse-tightening by the Pentagon and civilian aircraft purchasers.
Northrop Grumman said past year it could create 1,500 new jobs in Palmdale under the $80 billion bomber contract.
Advertisement
Boeing has delivered 223 C-17s to the U.S. Air Force and dozens more to Australia, Canada, India, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the Strategic Airlift Capability, a 12-nation consortium of mostly North Atlantic Treaty Organisation members.
