When we are told about huge buildings we usually think of the Burj Khalifa. With their 828 meters highthis skyscraper located in Dubai is twice the height of the Empire State Building in New York (whose antenna could have become the tallest airship apartment in the world) and is even almost three times the size of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, but it is not the unique.
We may also consider the Steinway Tower, a majestic feat of engineering that has earned the label “the world’s thinnest skyscraper” for its 438 meters with a width-to-height ratio of 24:1. Russia’s “human hives” could also be another example. These are huge buildings in which about 20,000 people reside.
Say hello to the Boeing Everett Factory
The truth is that if we take into account the total volume, apartment buildings are out of the equation. The first place of the largest building in the world is occupied by a colossal Boeing aircraft factory that is located in the city of Everett, Washington. With their 13,385,378 cubic meters stands out above all the structures on the planet.
Although Boeing has recently been plunged into the crisis of the 737 MAX and the European Airbus has become the largest aircraft manufacturer in the worldthe American aerospace company has a long history designing and building some of the most emblematic and advanced commercial aircraft of all time, one of them, the mythical 737.
We talk about the 747 because the Boeing Everett Factory was built especially for that plane, and it wasn’t just any plane. The company was literally risking its reputation with a project that aspired to be the first widebody, the largest, the heaviest, and the one in charge of introducing modern turbofan engine technology, which was powerful and less polluting.
The 747 project was born while air travel was increasing considerably in the 1960s. After the revolution brought about by the Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8, the founder of Pan Am, Juan Trippe, made an unusual request to his friend Bill Allen, the president of Boeing: qwho built an airplane 2 1/2 times the size of the 707.
“It was an amazing request given the cost it had cost to develop the 707,” said businessman Richard Branson in a column published in Time magazine in 1997 on Trippe’s peculiar standards of doing business. According to Virgin Galactic’s founder, Trippe said, “If you build it, I’ll buy it.” And Allen replied, “If you buy it, I’ll build it.”
The truth is that not everything was in a handshake. As Heraldnet points outBoeing finally got a Pan Am’s $525 million contract to build 25 Boeing 747s. Thus, the company bought in 1966 some 320 hectares of an area that had been operated by the United States Army for many years. The factory opened in 1967 and four months later the first workers began to arrive.
Just 16 months later, the first Boeing 747 rolled off the production lines fully assembled and ready to fly. That moment captured the headlines of many newspapers and television news that announced the arrival of one of the greatest technological achievements of aviation in the 21st century, an achievement that would not have been possible without that enormous factory.
Allen had the ability to lead a team that developed this ambitious project in record time. That experience, precisely, served to continue promoting new versions of the 747, one of them specially designed for the President of the United States, and other aircraft, such as the 767, 777 and 787which required expanding the original facilities of the Boeing Everett Factory.
Today, the Boeing campus is so huge that it straddles State Highway 525, known as the Boeing Freeway. Covered installations cover 13,385,378. In total, there are more than 30,000 employees who are responsible for the manufacture and production of aircraft and also the development of new products, security and aviation protection.
More than 30,000 employees work at Boeing’s Everett campus
There are also teams in charge of receiving components that arrive from different parts of the world to be assembled in the new aircraft and others dedicated specifically to certification tasks. Finally mention that once the planes are ready, airlines pick them up directly from Everett.
Let’s also talk about dimensions. Boeing’s Everett campus is large enough to encompass California’s Disneyland Park with 10 acres left over for, say, parking. Colossal, right? It is so big that for the comfort and safety of the people who are there, the factory has its own fire department, security team, cafes, restaurants, nursery and gym.
Inside the campus, but on the other side of the airport, is The Boeing Store, a theater, and the Future of Flight Aviation Center, which has an aviation museum, an educational center and is the starting point for guided tours of Boeing facilities. More than 50 years after its inauguration, the campus and its factory continue to function and everything seems to indicate that they will continue to do so for a long time to come.
It should be noted that Boing has had a presence in Everett long before the opening of the current factory. The company The company operated two facilities to provide assembly support for the B-17 heavy bomber during World War II. In 1956 there was also a team tasked with building shipping parts and accessories for the B-52 bomber and KC-135 tanker programs.
Images and video | boeing
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