BFGoodrich Aerospace, a division of the big Charlotte, N.C.-based BFGoodrich Co. that makes carbon brake disks for aircraft brakes at its West Plains plant, expects to double its employment here this year to more than 100 employees.


Ben Duncan, the Spokane divisions human resources manager, says BFGoodrich employed 53 people at the end of last year and already has hired 15 more in the last two months. The company expects to add another 43 workers by the end of the year, which would give the division 111 employees, he says.


When BFGoodrich opened its plant here in 1999, it said it expected to employ 250 people here by 2005. Its employment projections have exceed expectations somewhat because the companys previously announced plant expansion here is proceeding ahead of schedule, Duncan says.


The expansion, which began last April, will more than double the size of the West Plains complex to 140,000 square feet of floor space. The expansion also will broaden the scope of work that is handled here.


For instance, rather than starting with doughnut-shaped pieces of fiber made at BFGoodrichs Pueblo plant, the Spokane division now will make those pieces itself, using raw oxidized polyacrylonitrile fiber. That raw fiber will be run through a loom in the plants new textile building thats to come on line in the next two months to create woven 2-inch-thick sheets of fiber and then will be cut into the doughnut-shaped pieces. To make the brake disks, the doughnut-shaped pieces are carbonized in a furnace. The resulting disks are then machined and sanded here and are assembled at another BFGoodrich plant into airplane brakes.


As a result of the expansion, the plants furnace building will more than double in size.


Most of the positions that the plant here will be looking to fill include furnace operators, machinists, textile operators, and maintenance mechanics, Duncan says.


He says that the minimum starting wage for most of those positions is about $28,000 a year.