Bank & thrust: building the world's most powerful jet engine is a big job in Durham.

• Author: Martin, Edward
• Position: PICTURE THIS

Marrying might and mystery, jet engines are equal parts brawn and beauty, their sculpted compressor blades resembling chambered nautilus or flower petals. At the GE Transportation-Aircraft Engines plant in Durham, the line between art and assembly line might be thin, but engines built here have reshaped the aviation industry like few other developments.

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This is the birthplace of the GE90, which GE touts as the world's most powerful jet engine, and several of its smaller cousins. The GE90's 115,000 pounds of thrust is equivalent to the power of 40 or more corporate jets. "Its impact on flying has been staggering," says Rick Kennedy, spokesman for GE's Cincinnati-based jet-engine division. "Because of that level of thrust, we can now fly twin-engine planes on missions that used to be only possible using four-engine 747s."

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Extra thrust means the planes can lift off with the larger fuel loads needed to fly routes such as that from the East Coast over the North Pole to China. The engines are more reliable than their predecessors, enabling them to soar over oceans, hours from the nearest airport. They can fly profitably while carrying fewer passengers, making possible flights such as US Airways' from Charlotte to Frankfurt. Durham, though, is making more than history.

The 500,000-square-foot factory was built in 1972 to make steam turbines for electricity power plants and was converted in 1993 to build jet engines. There, metal is molded into machine to a surprising degree by hand. The 199 employees are accustomed to building massive engines--the GE90 weighs nine tons--at incredibly small tolerances. "Everything is measured typically down to three and four decimal places," says Greg Richards, program leader for the GE90. The front fan for the engine is 10 feet in diameter.

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In a nearly invisible ballet, workers--all are required to be Federal Aviation Administration-licensed mechanics--dance with their work. On what they call a barge flow line, men and the engines they're building drift by stationary parts bins...