The Boeing Co has closed out the 757 commercial jet program with the last of the 1,050 jets to roll off the assembly line. \nT-shirts showing a 757 with the words, "Celebrate the Legacy," were worn by thousands of past and present Boeing workers on Thursday at a ceremony marking the end of two decades of production of the 200-passenger plane in this Seattle suburb. \n"A big chunk of my life has been spent on this program," said Clyde Brown, who worked on the 757 line from the start more than 22 years ago to the end. "That plane has been good to me." \nThe last 757 is scheduled for delivery to Shanghai Airlines in April. \nBrown and many other workers will now work on another plane that figured in the demise of the 757 -- the newest models of the 737, also made in Renton. No layoffs from the end of 757 production are planned. \nAlan Mulally, head of the company's commercial airplane division, said Boeing plans to "crank up" 737 production but gave no details. \nBoeing, based in Chicago, announced in July that after cutting more than 27,000 jobs in three years, about 3,000 workers will be hired in the Puget Sound region by Dec. 31. \nMany are in technical and engineering jobs for the 7E7 program in Everett and a military program to equip the 737 airframe as a Navy submarine-hunting aircraft. \nAny new hires for 737 production were factored into Boeing's employment forecast in July, a spokeswoman said. \nMulally was an engineer on the original design team for the 757 program, which was headed by Philip Condit, who went on to become chief executive of Boeing but resigned earlier this year in an uproar over the use of dubious methods to win government contracts. \nAt the ceremony Mulally noted that all but 20 of the 757s remain in service worldwide. \n"It has one of the great safety records of any plane in the world," he said. \nOne unique feature for Boeing was simultaneous design of the single-aisle 757 and the widebody 767, which is assembled in Everett. \nDespite differences in size and range, they were designed with common flight decks so pilots trained on one could fly the other with little additional training, resulting in big cost savings for airlines. \nSales of 757s reached a peak of 99 planes in 1992 but declined to 45 by 2000, then plummeted in the airline industry slump that followed the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. \nTwo of the three planes seized by the terrorists were 757s. One hit the Pentagon and the other crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after passengers stormed the cockpit. \nFactors in the end of the line for the 757 include development of bigger, more economical and longer-range 737 models, the 7E7 Dreamliner that Boeing plans to begin building in 2006 and competition from Airbus SAS. \nStill, Mulally said predicted that Boeing would be providing product support for the 757 for "the next 30 to 40 years."
PHOTO: EPA
With the speed cryptocurrency is emerging as the millennial generation’s alternative asset of choice in India, it is hard to imagine that just two years ago a couple of blockchain pioneers were briefly in police custody. Sathvik Vishwanath and Harish BV, cofounders of a then five-year-old start-up, were arrested in late 2018. No, they had not pulled off a shady initial coin offering. Their “crime” was that they put up a kiosk in a mall in Bangalore where customers could swap bitcoin, ether or ripple for cash or vice versa. That was the whole point of unocoin, their crypto token exchange.
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FIVE NEW FABS: An acquisition of Siltronic would boost GlobalWafers’ market share from 17 to 30 percent, easily surpassing Japanese rival Sumco’s 25 percent GlobalWafers Inc (環球晶圓) yesterday said it is in final talks to acquire Germany-based Siltronic AG in a 3.75 billion euro (US$4.5 billion) deal, which might help it compete with its closest rival Sumco Corp of Japan. The acquisition would be the fifth for GlobalWafers since 2008, as it has grown to become the world’s No. 3 supplier of silicon wafers through such deals. GlobalWafers, which has a 17 percent market share, would see its market position greatly elevated to 30 percent when combined with Siltronic’s 13 percent, according to a presentation Siltronic gave to its investors at a quarterly conference in August. Sumco
A year of crisis for the lira has kept people in Turkey buying gold at a record pace. Now the appetite for more bullion risks becoming a drag on the currency just as a rally struggles to regain momentum. In the two weeks after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan cleared out the leadership ranks blamed for failing to stabilize the lira and draining reserves, Turkish retail investors and firms added US$2.2 billion to their gold holdings, taking them to US$36.4 billion, or almost triple the total last year, Turkish central bank data showed. People are not relenting in their zeal to own
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