Boeing may transfer Douglas employees to Seattle.

Boeing Co. is looking for a few hundred good men and women - and it may take them from Long Beach.

If the giant aircraft manufacturer does transfer a large group of employees to Seattle from its new Douglas Aircraft division, as company officials hinted last week, the question becomes: Will they ever come back?

Boeing is looking for ways to fill its short-term need for plane manufacturing assistance. Company officials said they may temporarily move a few hundred workers to build planes in Seattle over the coming months. They include mechanics, quality controllers and other support staff that are needed to fill in on assembly lines while new hires are trained.

"Boeing is looking for several hundred experienced airplane mechanics for a limited period of time, and the Douglas facility is one possible source," said company spokesman Brian Ames. He said the workers would be needed there for about four to six months.

But there is no telling whether their assignment would last longer, or even become permanent. Don Hanson, a Boeing spokesman in Long Beach, acknowledged the possibility that the workers might end up staying longer than their original assignment.

He noted that some of the 120 or so McDonnell Douglas engineers dispatched to Seattle last December for a six-month stint are still there.

As of now, Boeing officials say the number of workers needed is uncertain, and there is no time table for when a decision is expected. The company would rather bring workers to its Seattle facilities than move production to Long Beach, Ames said.

"Moving this small amount of production to Long Beach would mean a lot of immediate infrastructure investments," Ames said. "Boeing is taking more of a long-term look at Long Beach."

Boeing, which completed a merger with the McDonnell-Douglas Corp. in August, is scrambling to fill its ballooning orders for planes. Officials announced last week that 12 planes scheduled for delivery this month would be delayed until October.

Speculation over the fate of the Douglas facility has been rife ever since the merger. Some analysts, including Michael Beltramo, president of Los Angeles aerospace consultants Beltramo & Associates, believe Boeing will expand production in Long Beach rather than continue to siphon off workers to Seattle though it may take a few years before the local operation is ready.

Beltramo said last week's announcement was a positive one, in spite of the uncertainties.

"This indicates that the merger of two entities and their cultures is coming along pretty quickly," Beltramo said. He noted that there was animosity between the Los Angeles-based Douglas Aircraft Co. and the McDonnell Corp. of St. Louis when they merged in 1967.

"It seemed like years before the companies were really mixing, and they certainly wouldn't have considered something like this so soon," he said.

City of Long Beach spokesman Greg Davy said a decision by Boeing to move the workers would be respected, though the city also hopes to get the workers back.