There is some activity going on in Wichita even as India comes online to start building light aircraft again. It seems that every time it looks like Wichita is in a spiral, someone puts the ball back in the center kicks the rudder back to zero and pulls back on the yoke. Well, I’ll be damned the onlookers say. It is as if the founding city of the first US Mail Planes still has some powerful spirits flying around from the past entrepreneurs and pioneers who made Wichita what it is today.

Two new things are happening in Wichita which might help the nearly 6000 laid off aerospace and aviation workers; Cessna is building a Citation Jet Center

http://customer.cessna.com/citation/locator.chtml

for customer service issues and Boeings Dreamliner the 7E7 will be partially built in Wichita, but very little of it and recently an interesting twist of fate; Airbus will be building certain wing assembly sections

http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/business/...ion/6098084.htm

http://seattle.bizjournals.com/seattle/sto.../05/story2.html

in Wichita, due to the availability of highly skilled laboring the newest materials and components. Still the aviation sector predicts another 2500 job losses to make the total 8,100 job losses or 40% in the next year, without a return on the aviation market sector. Another recent good piece of news was the Boeing sale to AirTrans

http://seattle.bizjournals.com/seattle/sto.../05/story2.html

and Thayer Aerospace getting a contract for a component on the Joint Strike Fighter

http://webs.wichita.edu/cedbr/Forecast2003.Pdf

being built North East of Dallas. If the sector continues a decline which we are hopeful it will not there could be another huge set of lay offs and more complications for small business machine shops servicing those industries and companies. Steinmart and Albertsons pulled out of Wichita and that cost 600 jobs which were replaced fairly quickly with new stores going up on Rock Road and on 400/54 Hwy (coined the Yellow Brick Hwy, KS has a good sense of humor with those road signs?) Personally I prefer to fly over KS it is just too far across to drive listening to the same music on your CD player five times as you run out of music in the box. No wonder they make airplanes there, the damn state is nearly as long as TX, it could be its own country no doubt. Lindbergh must have practiced flying mail there and decided hell it is nearly as long as the distance across the pond anyway? And it is about as flat at the ocean too. But the technology sector is hurt;

http://www.wichitatechnology.com

"Lance Winslow" - If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs