A California startup that aspires to snatch market share from Boeing and Airbus has selected the Greensboro airport for its first plane manufacturing factory, an ambitious $4.7 billion project that the company, JetZero, envisions will one day employ more than 14,500 workers. If successful, it will be the biggest new workforce in recent North Carolina history.
On Thursday, the N.C. Economic Investment Committee awarded JetZero an incentive package to build at the Piedmont Triad International Airport, about 65 miles west of Durham. The state grant will be worth up to $1 billion if the jet maker achieves its hiring and investment goals by 2036 and then maintains five-figure employment at the site over three decades.
These jobs are expected to pay an average salary of at least $89,340.
JetZero’s workforce target smashes the record for a North Carolina-backed economic project, the 7,500 jobs promised in 2022 by the automaker VinFast in Chatham County.
Greensboro landed the project after JetZero considered 25 locations in 17 states, state officials said. The Piedmont city is the third-largest in North Carolina with a population just above 300,000.
“We’ve got nearly 1,200 acres and a parallel runway,” Guilford County Commissioner Pat Tillman told The News & Observer in a phone interview last week. “And that is something that a lot of our neighbors don’t have.”
JetZero has designed a prototype plane with unique dimensions and lighter materials. Resembling a flying squirrel or manta ray, the prospective “Z4” aircraft will have a flatter, blended wing body which provides superior fuel efficiency to standard aircraft, company spokesperson Jenny Derwin told The N&O. Each Z4 is expected to seat up to 250 passengers in its wider cabin.
Boeing and Airbus currently account for more than 90% of passenger jet manufacturing. It is a duopoly JetZero looks to disrupt.
The Southern California company was founded in 2020 by Tom O’Leary and Mark Page. O’Leary is the CEO and newer to the aviation industry, having started at the aerospace firm Beta Technologies in the mid-2010s. In contrast, the chief technology officer, Page, is an industry veteran who helped pioneer the unique blended-wing shape JetZero pursues.
“Not only will this plane be 50% more fuel efficient,” O’Leary said Thursday afternoon during a celebratory event in Greensboro. “It’s going to deliver a better passenger experience than you’ve ever had before on any other plane.”
In 2023, the U.S. Air Force awarded JetZero a $235 million contract to build a full-scale demonstrator jet. This experimental plane is expected to fly in 2027, and the company has partnered with Delta Air Lines to operate it. And this winter, JetZero signed components deals with RTX subsidiaries Pratt & Whitney and Collins Aerospace to supply this demonstrator.
JetZero has designed a jet prototype with unique dimensions and lighter materials. It hopes to fly the demonstrator plane in 2027.
JetZero plans to begin commercial service in 2030. Alaska Airlines and United Airlines are both investors and have inked conditional purchase agreements with the startup.
“If successful, JetZero has the potential to evolve our core mainline business by developing aircraft with a bigger, more comfortable cabin experience for our customers while increasing fuel efficiency across our network,” said Andrew Chang, managing director of United Airlines Ventures, in a statement announcing his company’s investment.
In selecting Greensboro, JetZero is joining another aviation startup with lofty aims in the Piedmont city. The jet manufacturer Boom Supersonic has committed to assembling its sound barrier-breaking aircraft at the local airport. There, Boom has pledged to employ up to 1,760 local workers in exchange for $121.5 million in potential incentives from North Carolina and Guilford County.
The Honda Aircraft Company, which makes smaller jets, is also headquartered in Greensboro.
“The lower cost of doing business and the more business-friendly regulatory climate of Greensboro versus other U.S. aerospace hubs like Los Angeles, Seattle, Connecticut and Denver also distinguish the Triad,” said John Boyd, a Florida-based site selection consultant who has previously worked with Pratt & Whitney and Boeing.
Combined, Guilford County and the City of Greensboro offered JetZero incentives worth up to $784 million to build its factory. At capacity, JetZero expects the Greensboro plant to produce 20 aircraft a month.
“North Carolina was first in flight,” Gov. Josh Stein said during an event early Thursday afternoon at the Piedmont Triad International Airport. “We’re also the future of flight.”
Job development investment grants, or JDIGs, are the main incentive tool North Carolina offers companies to invest in the state. These are realized through payroll tax rebates once recipients meet agreed-upon hiring and spending goals.
Since the JDIG program began in 2003, most recipients have failed to meet their original job targets. This includes the biggest-ever jobs commitment, given to the Vietnamese carmaker VinFast three years ago. Despite promising to create at least 7,500 jobs, the company has postponed the opening of its Chatham County factory as it’s struggled to break through in North America.
Over the first 20 years of the JDIG program, more than one in five projects terminated before any taxpayer money went to grant recipients, a 2023 N&O analysis found. Around the same number ended early with some public funds allocated after recipient companies created or retained some jobs.
Once production begins, Derwin said the hiring ramp-up period will last at least five years.
For now, JetZero and North Carolina both have sky-high hopes in a region with a burgeoning aviation reputation.
