Therefore technical expertise was not as important as production capacity and letters of intent were sent out to all bigger production facilities to probe their interest in building airplanes.

It was there, he said, during a particularly illuminating 3 a.m. flight check over the crescent shaped Atlantic beaches, that he decided to return to his passion of building airplanes.

Alan Mulally, president of the Boeing commercial airplane division, said in a statement: "We're looking forward to getting back to the business of building airplanes.

Rohrbach was a pioneer in building airplanes based on the metal stressed skin principle.

Until recently, this policy of teaching China the magic of building airplanes while helping it out in Washington has made Boeing an indispensable corporate partner.

Local economists said they welcomed Northrop's acquisition of Grumman, saying the merger might strengthen Grumman's role in building airplanes.

It's like asking the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk to estimate how much money Curtiss-Wright Corporation would someday make out of building airplanes.

Uniform scaling happens, for example, when enlarging or reducing a photograph, or when creating a scale model of a building, car, airplane, etc.

After returning to California in 1921, Mr. Raymond worked briefly for his father at the hotel but soon quit to pursue his dream of building airplanes.

Airbus would like to maintain its steady march toward building 350 airplanes each year, about half the forecast demand.