Boeing hasn’t yet declared whether it will build a new breed of midsize passenger jet — variously known as the New Mid-Market Airplane, NMA or 797 — but Washington state officials are already arguing they have the best place to build it.
And now they have a statistics-filled report to back up that claim.
The report, known as the Aerospace Competitive Economics Study or ACES, was researched and written up by aerospace consultants at the Teal Group and Olympic Analytics for labor unions at Boeing, on behalf of the Choose Washington New Mid-Market Airplane Council.
Those groups have an obvious interest in keeping Boeing airplane production in the Evergreen State, but today Washington Gov. Jay Inslee insisted the report is legit.
“If you dig down and look at this research, this is not a puff piece,” Inslee told journalists and VIPs who gathered at South Seattle College’s aviation maintenance technology hangar. “It is a scientifically rigorous evaluation that shows what we know: Washington is the place to build this airplane.”
