By Sharon Terlep

A fire tore through an airplane-parts factory last month in suburban Philadelphia, decimating the century-old plant. Boeing has been racing ever since to size up whether it will delay the jet maker's turnaround plans.

Equal in size to about 10 football fields, the factory, operated by a Berkshire Hathaway company, was the sole supplier of some critical fasteners used in Boeing planes. Fallout from the blaze now threatens the aerospace company's effort to get its manufacturing operations back on track.

Boeing is searching to find alternative suppliers, but replacing the parts isn't an easy task. Many might look like typical bolts, but the fasteners must be manufactured to hold up to the demands of air travel, and some of the designs are complex. They are used in jet engines, landing gear and other parts of the plane.

The plant's loss won't have an immediate effect on production, the company said, but suppliers and analysts expect fallout as Boeing works through its parts supply.

"Our supply chain team is all over this, and they'll do yeoman's work to get a recovery plan in place," Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg said at a February investor conference. "We'll get through it."

The factory is situated in a suburb about 10 miles north of Philadelphia and belongs to SPS Technologies, a unit of Berkshire's Precision Castparts, which makes an array of metal components for industries from power plants to medical devices.

Ortberg said Boeing relies on SPS for many parts for both its 737 and 787 jets. A parts shipment that had been set to go out before the fire was inaccessible in its aftermath, he said.

The company declined to say how many parts are provided by SPS alone or whether it has been able to access the blocked inventory.

The fire broke out Feb. 17 and took several days to extinguish as high winds and freezing temperatures challenged firefighting efforts. Nearby schools closed and neighboring residents were told to evacuate as smoke and chemical-laden fumes filled the air. No workers were injured.

SPS, on its website, says it is hard to find an aircraft today that doesn't use the company's fasteners, which span in size from 3 inches to 4 feet, and comprise an array of materials.

The factory is one of the country's largest aerospace fastener plants, providing about 15% of the industry's supply, said Kevin Michaels, managing director of consulting firm AeroDynamic Advisory. The industry is tight on both factory capacity and manufacturing workers, which could complicate efforts to shift production to another supplier, he said.

Companies throughout the aerospace supply chain -- from engine makers General Electric and Safran to Boeing rival Airbus -- use SPS parts. Safran and GE supply engines for Boeing jets.

Airbus said it is still assessing the situation and expects the effect on its operations to be limited. GE said it is working to minimize disruptions. Safran said it is assessing the situation.

For Boeing, the incident comes at a crucial time in its recovery plan.

Ortberg's goal of reversing Boeing's cash burn hinges on pumping out 38 of its MAX jets a month by later this year.

Production of the planes sank last year as the company waded through a quality crisis after last year's fuselage blowout on an Alaska Airlines flight. A strike in the fall by Boeing's largest union idled most of the company's manufacturing for months.

So far, Boeing has notched some key wins toward hitting Ortberg's target.

Boeing rolled out 35 MAXs in February, analysts estimate, a jump from the 20 or so produced in January.

The company said this week that it closed one of two so-called shadow factories, a production line where engineers and mechanics work on fixing, maintaining or updating aircraft instead of building new ones. Gone are the 787 Dreamliners that had been sitting in Everett, Wash., awaiting checks to ensure that parts of the planes were properly pieced together.

Meanwhile, Ortberg said, quality has improved and the company is hitting targets it set last year to satisfy federal regulators that its manufacturing operations are back on track.

"We put together our recovery plan assuming that we'd have some hiccups in the supply chain." Ortberg said. "And this is an example of a hiccup in the supply chain."

Write to Sharon Terlep at sharon.terlep@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 06, 2025 12:03 ET (17:03 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.