Fuselage Panels

Produced at the Hawthorne facility, the 747 main fuselage runs nearly the entire length of the passenger compartment. Each shipset is delivered to Boeing by rail in 13 custom oversized railcars.

The fuselage is the largest single subcontract on the Boeing 747. It consists of 28 major panels and includes 11 doors and 110 floor beams - more than 150 feet of structure.

For Boeing's next-generation airplane, the 787, Vought will build aft fuselage sections 47 and 48 in a new facility located in North Charleston, S.C. Our joint venture with Alenia Aeronautica will integrate more than 60 percent of the 787 fuselage sections from Vought, Alenia and other structural partners.

At Vought's headquarters facility in Dallas, the company is manufacturing the cabin structure for Sikorsky's UH-60L, M, S and S-70A variants of BLACK HAWK helicopters. The contract award, announced in early 2005, has a potential value of $1.3 billion and covers 1,100 shipsets of structure delivered over the next 15 years. The first phase of Vought's contract includes 350 shipsets through 2009.