Spirit's progress

 One of the top executives tasked with overseeing Spirit AeroSystems' operations in Kinston gave the members of the Evening Rotary Club an update on the construction of its manufacturing facility.

"This state just seems to be poised for a breakthrough in the aviation sector," Rick Davis, the company's North Carolina site operations director, told the group during their monthly meeting in the Broken Eagle Eatery.

Jerry Kanter, Rotary member and longtime proponent of bringing aviation to Kinston, welcomed Davis and his wife Randy.

"In 1903, Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, opened up Eastern North Carolina and the world to the 20th century," he said of the site of the first successful airplane flight. "Tonight, we're opening up the second hundred years in aviation in Eastern North Carolina via Kinston and Lenoir County."

The 500,000-square foot facility will be located at the Global TransPark. Since the groundbreaking ceremony in September, local contractors have been preparing the land that the concrete foundation will be built on.

The facility will be built over the next year and a half, and Spirit officials plan to begin manufacturing fuselage and wing components of the Airbus A350 XWB passenger aircraft in the spring of 2010.

Davis, who will move to the area along with the rest of the Spirit executives assigned to Kinston, shared the company's guiding principles for its local operation: Take care of people; get the job done; create value.

"Make no mistake, we're a business and we're in business to make money," he said. "But the way you make that money is to take care of people and get the job done and that creates value."