Boeing Everett Factory

The Boeing Everett Factory, officially the Everett Production Facility, is an airplane assembly facility operated by Boeing in Everett, Washington, United States. It sits on the north side of Paine Field and includes the largest building in the world by volume at over 472 e6cuft, which covers 98.3 acre.[1]

The entire complex covers approximately 1,000 acre and spans both sides of State Route 526 (named the Boeing Freeway). The factory was built in 1967 for the Boeing 747 and has since been expanded several times to accommodate new airliners, including the 767, 777, and 787 programs. More than 5,000 widebody aircraft have been built at the Everett factory since it opened.[2]

Facilities

The Boeing Everett complex sits on 1,000 acre in southwestern Everett, about 22 mi north of Seattle.[3][4] It includes up to 200 separate buildings and facilities, mostly on the north and east sides of Paine Field's main runway, and straddles both sides of State Route 526 (named the Boeing Freeway).[5][6] The complex includes a fire station, a medical clinic, a gymnasium, on-site security, and seven restaurants and cafes.[7][8] As of 2022, Boeing has 30,000 workers at its Everett site who are scheduled in three shifts, primarily during daytime hours.[9][10] The company is the largest employer in Everett and Snohomish County.[11][12]

The main assembly building, immediately north of the Boeing Freeway, covers 98.3 acre and is organized into six production lines that are separated by walls, offices, and other spaces.[13][14] It is the world's largest building by volume at 472,370,319 cuft of interior space according to Guinness World Records;[4][15] the building is large enough to fit all of Disneyland or 75 American football fields.[7] The production lines move at a rate of 1.5 in per minute[8] and are guided by 26 overhead cranes that move along 31 mi of track.[16][17] These cranes are suspended along the roof trusses, which are 300 to 350 ft long and are supported by columns that are 90 ft tall.[18] A network of pedestrian and utilities tunnels span 2.33 mi under the factory floor;[19] employees also use a shared fleet of 1,300 bicycles and tricycles to move around the factory floor.[4][12]

The main building is 114 ft tall[12] and has six hangar doors that are each 82 ft tall and 300 to 350 ft wide. The doors have a six-part mural that was recognized as the world's largest digital image in 2006 by Guinness World Records.[20][21] The building has a central ventilation system but lacks air conditioning; it is instead cooled by opening the doors for outdoor air.[22] The building is heated through residual warming from employees and equipment, including the 1 million overhead lights in the factory.[4][23] An urban legend states that clouds used to form inside the main building due to its size prior to the installation of upgraded ventilation systems.[4][23] Adjacent buildings include a composite wing manufacturing plant with 1.2 e6sqft of floor space;[13] paint and seal buildings; and an auxiliary fuselage assembly plant for the Boeing 777X.[24][25]

The north side of the factory complex is connected to the flight line at Paine Field via a taxiway that crosses over the Boeing Freeway west of Airport Road;[26] airplanes are towed from the factory to flight line facilities at night to avoid disrupting traffic.[27] The south side includes a set of three paint hangars,[27] a delivery center with conference rooms,[28] and parking spaces for airplanes.[29] The flight line area connects to the main runway at Paine Field, which is 9,010 ft long and is the only one at the airport that can accommodate jetliners.[30] The runway has also been used for commercial service since the opening of a new passenger terminal at the airport in 2019.[31] Additional spaces for parked airplanes are on the west side of the runway and southwest of the main building;[32] Paine Field's short crosswind runway has also occasionally been used to park airplanes since 2010;[33][34] the runway and an adjacent taxiway have been leased by Boeing from the county government to store airplanes.[35][36]

In 2007, an empty building on the campus was used by Japanese railcar manufacturer Kinki Sharyo to assemble a fleet of Link light rail trains for Sound Transit.[37]

History

Boeing opened its first facilities in Everett on October 13, 1943, at a former auto garage to produce sections for the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress. The company had several small shops in the city, but their presence in the area was reduced by 1963.[38] The first 25 orders for the Boeing 747, to be the world's largest jetliner, were sold to Pan American World Airways for $525 million (equivalent to $ billion in ) in March 1966. The program would require a larger factory than their Renton facility, which was instead planned to be used for the conceptual 2707 supersonic airliner.[39] Among the sites considered by Boeing for a new factory were Monroe, Washington; McChord Air Force Base near Tacoma, Washington;[40] Moses Lake, Washington; Cleveland, Ohio; and Walnut Creek, California.[38][41]

On June 17, 1966, the company announced that it had selected a site adjacent to Paine Field as the future home of its Boeing 747 assembly plant.[42] Boeing purchased 780 acre north of the airport, which had primarily been used by the U.S. military and small businesses;[38][43] a 75-year lease for use of Paine Field was also signed with the county government, which owned the airport.[44] The company had already spent several months acquiring properties around the airport in preparation of the announcement and cleared parts of the site by late May.[41][45]

The 158 e6cuft factory, planned to become the world's largest building by volume, was built in sections beginning in late June.[46][47] The first section housed a mockup of the Boeing 747 that had been under assembly at the Renton factory.[48] A railroad spur connecting the site to the mainline tracks at Mukilteo was constructed through Japanese Gulch.[49] The first 113 workers at the Everett factory began work on January 3, 1967, and prepared for the assembly of the relocated Renton mockup.[50] The factory was officially opened on May 1, 1967, four months after the first workers had arrived to start construction of the 747.[38] Construction of the factory involved 4.5 e6cuyd of soil to be excavated.[51]

The main factory building was originally 43 acre and later expanded by 45 percent in 1979 as part of the Boeing 767 program and another 50 percent in 1990 for the Boeing 777.[52][53] The company acquired 68 acre of Paine Field property from the county government in 1989 to expand its flight line.[54]

To accommodate the Dreamlifter, a converted 747-400 which delivered 787 sections to the plant, a base was constructed on the western edge of Paine Field's runway. Opening in October 2013, the 17 acre base, called the Dreamlifter Operations Center, was funded by Snohomish County with $35 million in bonds; it is owned by the county via the airport, with Boeing originally leasing the site and servicing the bonds.[55] Following Boeing's decision to shutter the 787 production line in Everett and consolidate 787 production in South Carolina, the lease on the Dreamlifter Operations Center was transferred to FedEx for use as a cargo base.[56]

Several workers at the Everett facility tested positive for COVID-19 in early March 2020, prior to a full shutdown of operations.[57] The factory was shut down for three weeks until workers were able to return with mandatory face masks, social distancing, and staggered start times to reduce potential exposure.[58]

As of 2025, the Everett facility has 30 Boeing 777X airframes in storage on unused runways—some for as long as six years. The factory had also moved workers away from the 777X program to complete fuselage repairs on the Boeing 787 that were completed in February 2025. Additional work to repair 737 MAX fuselages is expected to continue in what is described as Everett's "shadow factory".[59]

Current production aircraft

Former production aircraft

Tours

Following several months of unofficial visits, Boeing began offering factory tours with the first rollout of the 747 in 1968.[76][77] The first year of tours had over 39,000 visitors, which later grew to 55,000 annually by the 1980s; a dedicated tour building was constructed in 1984 and later replaced by the Future of Flight Aviation Center in 2005.[76][19] The new center has a theater, exhibits, a Boeing Store gift shop, and café. As of 2020 over 150,000 people come each year to visit the factory. The Boeing factory tour was suspended from 2020 to 2023 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[78]

External links