|
 Boeing said it had begun notifying 22 states that offered to host
the factory for the 777X jet, but it did not say which ones made the
short list.
A factory to build the new version of Boeing's most popular
wide-body jetliner would bring thousands of jobs and billions of
dollars in economic benefit to the winning location.
Jake Keys, a spokesman for the city of Greensboro, said Boeing had
told the city it was no longer in the running. Charlotte and Kinston
also did not make the list.
Washington state, home of the current 777 factory, was still waiting
to hear, said Alex Pietsch, director of the governor's office of
aerospace. The state has passed an $8.7 billion tax package to help
attract the work, but machinist workers did not ratify a labor
contract extension that Boeing said was necessary to ensure the work
went to Washington state.
Missouri, where Boeing employs about 15,000 workers, had offered the
company $1.7 billion in tax incentives for the 777X project.
A spokesman for Missouri Governor Jay Nixon declined to comment on
whether Missouri was still in the running.
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Boeing has already announced 800 new jobs in Missouri this year, the
governor's office said. Last week, the planemaker said it would add
400 research and technology jobs at its St. Louis campus to the 400
jobs it announced last June that it was placing there.
Officials in Alabama, South Carolina, California and Georgia either
declined to comment or said they had not yet heard from Boeing.
(Reporting by Colleen Jenkins;
additional reporting and writing by Harriet McLeod; editing by Alwyn
Scott and Lisa Shumaker)
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