A new report has identified St. Louis as the key hub of a 650-mile aerospace manufacturing and supply chain corridor stretching from the Midwest to North Texas.
Published by the St. Louis Regional Freightway during FreightWeekSTL 2026, the report says the Interstate 44 (I-44) Aerospace Supply Chain Corridor supports more than 1.6 million aerospace manufacturing and related jobs and generates over $250bn in economic activity.
According to the analysis, the corridor has an aerospace manufacturing concentration almost three times the US national average, while the sector’s GDP has grown by nearly 40% over the past five years.
The report also highlights St. Louis as the highest-value node within the corridor, accounting for one in five aerospace jobs. The region is home to Boeing’s Defence, Space & Security headquarters and benefits from multimodal freight links, including interstate highways, six Class I railroads, inland waterways and two airports.
Mary Lamie, Executive Vice President of Multimodal Enterprises for Bi-State Development and head of the St. Louis Regional Freightway, said: “The I-44 Aerospace Supply Chain Corridor is the logistics backbone of America’s aerospace industry, connecting some of the most important aerospace production centres in the country, and the St. Louis region sits at the point where that corridor begins.”
The report also points to more than $1bn of funded and planned improvements along I-44 in Missouri, alongside more than $10.2bn of industrial investment across the St. Louis region since 2019, as factors strengthening the area’s appeal for aerospace manufacturers and suppliers.
