Spirit AeroSystems

Spirit AeroSystems and McConnell Air Force Base
Area shown is about 2.5 miles across

My Daily Kona has a post up about the Boeing 737 that lost its exit door. He opens by mentioning the door maker: Spirit AeroSystems. I'm thinking this could be somebody's small shop, hammering out airliner doors in their garage. Not quite:

Spirit AeroSystems Holdings, Inc., based in Wichita, Kansas, United States, is an American aerostructure manufacturer, and is the world's largest first-tier aerostructures manufacturer. The company builds several important pieces of Boeing aircraft, including the fuselage of the 737, and 787, as well as the flight deck section of the fuselage of nearly all of Boeing airliners. Spirit also produces fuselage sections and front wing spars for the Airbus A350. - Wikipedia

As you can see from the satellite image at the top they are kind of a big deal. It was originally founded as the Stearman Aircraft. They also built the B-29, B-47 and B-52 bombers.

P. S, Yahoo Finance has a pretty good article about this incident.

Escape by David Baldacci

US Disciplinary Barracks, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas

Picked this book up at Costco yesterday. Always on the lookout for something interesting and cheap, and this looked promising. The author's name looked familiar, and I could have sworn I read one of his books before, but I cannot find it. The story of that book was about a detective in small coal mining town in eastern Pennsylvania. At least that's the way I remember it. It was kind of gnarly (as in a twisted plot) with some interesting characters. We'll see how this one goes.
    This one starts out at the US Disciplinary Barracks in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas (satellite image above). There are four prisons here, two at the north side of the Fort, and two along the south side. Looking at the map I'm wondering wasn't I just here recently? Yes, I was. virtually. The wreck of the Steamboat Arabia is just downstream about 20 miles as the crow flies, a little more by the river.

Update later in the day: The book I was thinking of wasn't by David Baldacci, it was Grievance, a Rugs Carlucci novel by K.C. Constantine. Carlucci, Baldacci, who wouldn't get confused? I've gotten a couple of chapters into Escape and it's beginning to look like it isn't anything special. But it's easy enough to read, and since I seem to be having a hard time getting enough sleep it's just my speed.