Boeing Will Move Headquarters From Chicago To D.C. Metro Area

Forbes and the Wall Street Journal confirmed Thursday that Boeing is moving its headquarters to Northern Virginia, away from the midwestern city that has hosted them for two decades and closer to federal regulators.

The Journal and the Washington Post reported that Boeing could announce its move to Arlington County, Virginia, next week.

A source told Forbes that the company was moving its headquarters.

The Journal didn't specify how many executive staff will be based at Boeing's new D.C.-area headquarters, but the company pledged to keep roughly 500 employees at its downtown Chicago headquarters when it first moved there two decades ago.

Forbes has reached out to the office of Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin for comment, but Boeing isn't expected to get massive government perks as a result of the move.

Forbes asked Boeing if it had any comment.

Boeing moved its executives to Chicago in 2001 after leaving the Seattle region, where most of its commercial airplanes are made. Boeing accepted a 20-year package of tax incentives from Chicago and Illinois officials, but the move was also seen as a way to reposition the company as a broader conglomerate rather than a primarily commercial plane company. The Federal Aviation Administration and lawmakers have been watching Boeing closely since the company's MAX jets were ordered out of the air. In November, the former FAA Administrator told Congress that Boeing had improved but still had more work to do on safety monitoring and that the FAA had pledged closer scrutiny of the production of the Dreamliner. The Justice Department agreed not to prosecute Boeing for fraud in a deal with the families of the victims of the MAX crash.

The expected move to the D.C. area positions Boeing executives even further from Seattle. Last year, Boeing moved all of its production of the 787 from the Seattle area to South Carolina, leaving its massive unionized factory in the Seattle suburb of Everett half-empty.

Surprising Fact

In the last few months, Boeing executives have spent less time in Chicago and more time on the East Coast, with CEO David Calhoun spending part of the year in South Carolina to deal with production problems on the 787 program, according to a report. An unnamed source said that Boeing's downtown Chicago high-rise was a ghost town.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Boeing is moving its headquarters to Washington, D.C.