Greensboro leaders study Wichita to prepare for aviation jobs boom

Greensboro’s aviation future looked less like a ribbon-cutting and more like a checklist in Wichita, where roughly 100 local educators, innovators, business leaders and public officials spent the Chamber of Commerce’s biennial Intercity Visit studying how a city turns aircraft factories into a durable economy.

That matters in Guilford County because Piedmont Triad International Airport is already pitching a regional base for aerospace growth. PTI says nearly 200 aerospace companies are in the Piedmont Triad, and it has more than 1,000 acres of on-site land ready for development, including an 800-acre tract that can be built out as one site or in parcels. With JetZero choosing PTI for a manufacturing facility expected to generate 14,500 jobs, the question is no longer whether demand exists. It is whether Greensboro, High Point and the rest of Guilford County can supply workers, land-use decisions and infrastructure fast enough to capture it.

Wichita was the obvious model. The city’s economic-development materials say it is home to Textron Aviation, Spirit AeroSystems, Bombardier Learjet and more than 450 companies in the aerospace supply chain. City history traces that industrial base to Travel Air Manufacturing Company, founded in January 1925 by Lloyd Stearman, Walter Beech and Clyde Cessna, and says Wichita earned its reputation as the “Air Capital of the World” because of a century of aircraft production. Cessna and Beechcraft are still based there, and the city says McConnell Air Force Base, activated in 1951, remains an important part of the local economy.

Kevin Baker, PTI’s executive director, said the point of the trip was to learn from Wichita’s experience so Greensboro does not repeat mistakes. Brent Christensen, president of the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce, said the goal was to understand how a community builds not just factories and hangars, but the surrounding services, talent pipeline and civic support that make a large-scale industry work for decades. Robbie Perkins said the visit mattered because it brought together people willing to spend time on Greensboro’s future.

The stakes are rising across the region. Toyota’s announcements at the Greensboro-Randolph Megasite, first a $2.1 billion investment and later nearly $8 billion more, brought total projected investment to about $13.9 billion and more than 5,000 jobs. For Guilford County, the real test is whether the Triad can turn that momentum into a broader aerospace cluster, with training programs, supplier recruitment, road access and developable land all moving at the speed of the companies being courted.