Boeing urged to buy more parts from PH

Ambassador Jose L. Cuisia Jr. greets a Filipina-American employee during a tour of Boeing’s Everett Factory in Seattle. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

WASHINGTON, DC—Boeing commercial aircraft already have components that are made in the Philippines, but the country could use more business from the airplane manufacturing giant, the Philippines’ ambassador to the US said.

“Few people know it but every Boeing plane that comes out of its assembly lines has parts made in the Philippines,” Ambassador Jose L. Cuisia  Jr. said after meeting with Boeing executives at the company’s Everett Factory near Seattle.

Boeing has five suppliers from the Philippines, but company executives said they are interested in finding quality suppliers around the world that can help expand capacity and bring down the cost of airplane parts, according to the envoy.

Philippine-based MOOG, B/E Aerospace, JAMCO, Famous Secret Machining and Applied Machining Corporation supply parts for Boeing commercial airplane models, including the Boeing 777-300ERs being flown by Philippine Airlines.

But Cuisia said there is room for more Philippine-based companies in Boeing’s global supply chain, which produces nearly 1 billion parts annually to support its commercial airplane production.

Joseph Benson, Boeing regional director for International Strategy and Business Development, told Cuisia that Boeing conducted supplier surveys in the Philippines in 2012 and assessed the potential for future industrial cooperation to help “improve and protect Boeing’s commercial airplane production system.”

Cuisia assured Boeing officials that the Philippines will work with them towards understanding the Philippines’ long term vision for aerospace industry and the potential for increasing the number of companies that could produce aircraft components for them.

The other Boeing officials who received Cuisia and Consul Reginald Bernabe of the Philippine Consulate General in San Francisco were: Scott Fancher, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Airplane Development; Bryan Lopp, Director, International Operations and Policy; J. Michael Carson, Regional Marketing Director East and Southeast Asia Sales, Commercial Airplanes; Chris Hartshorn, Asia Pacific Sales, Commercial Airplanes; Bea Querido, Supply Manager, Commercial Airplanes; and David Roberts, Sales Program Manager, Asia Pacific –India Sales.