BROUGHTON, UK—Like a cartoon space alien with a dome-like skull, an Airbus Beluga transport plane arriving from Madrid drops from the sky above this village 200 miles northwest of London and taxis to a stop with its front end tucked inside a large building off the runway. Its bulbous forehead pops open to disgorge massive wing panels—98 feet long and 20 feet wide—that will soon be assembled by sophisticated robots and about 800 people into the largest carbon-fiber composite wings now built for commercial aviation.
HAMPTON, VA—NASA’s Langley Research Center has installed a huge six-axis robot that will be used to deposit epoxy and carbon fibers for making aerospace structures and parts.
ASHEVILLE, NC—GE Aviation celebrated the opening of its new advanced composites factory here. The new 170,000-square-foot facility will be the first in the world to mass-produce engine components made of advanced ceramic matrix composite materials.
EVERETT, WA—Boeing will build a new factory here to make wings for its 777X wide body jet, assuring more than a decade of work on advanced composite materials for thousands of Snohomish County workers. The facility will be adjacent to the final assembly line for the jet.
