A Boeing Co. 777 jetliner is seen Feb. 3 on the production line in Everett, Wash.

Seattle ? Boeing, the target of four machinist strikes in two decades, may find the road to labor peace starts in Kansas, where a supplier and the union are working on a contract they say may set an industry blueprint.

Spirit AeroSystems Holdings Chief Executive Officer Jeff Turner and Tom Buffenbarger, president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, started meeting in January to lay the framework for longer accords that protect workers while giving companies flexibility in changing markets.

One goal as formal negotiations that began Tuesday in Wichita is to reduce rancor farther up the chain at former parent Boeing, Spirit’s biggest customer and the IAM’s largest employer. Spirit profit was hurt by the last Boeing strike in 2008 and the union is smarting from the planemaker’s decision last year to build a 787 Dreamliner plant at a nonunion site in South Carolina.

“Boeing’s always telling them, ‘What we need are reliable suppliers,”‘ Buffenbarger said in an interview. “This could turn the question around where the suppliers say to Boeing, ‘What we need is a reliable customer.”‘

Buffenbarger, 59, says he wants to see a model agreement reached with Spirit and then followed by other suppliers and aerospace companies whose contracts are coming up for renewal, such as Textron’s Cessna. That may then steer Boeing into productive talks rather than waging “war on their workers” when the current contract expires in 2012, he said.

Tim Healy, a spokesman for Chicago-based Boeing on labor issues, declined to comment. The company trails only Toulouse, France-based Airbus SAS in commercial-plane making.

“It’s premature to speculate on whether this approach could work because there are so many gray areas attached with production and where planes will even be built,” said Michel Merluzeau, an aerospace analyst with G2 Solutions in Seattle.

Neither union leaders nor Spirit officials would specify what their side will seek in the talks. The IAM’s contract covering about 5,900 Spirit workers ends June 25.

“In a market that’s so volatile, a classical set of negotiations is going to set us up to butt heads,” Spirit CEO Turner said in an interview.

If the company has a pessimistic view of the business and tries to win concessions that turn out to have been unnecessary, it breeds distrust, Turner said. On the other hand, an unforeseen slump when wages and job levels are locked in could ruin the company, he said.

“We’re going to embark on a whole new model of labor negotiations” instead of “still negotiating like it’s the 1930s,” said Ron Eldridge, who leads the IAM’s effort.

The IAM says it’s trying to build the new contract model with Spirit because they already have a close relationship. CEO Turner and the union’s Buffenbarger showed up together to discuss goals at a January training session for IAM negotiators in Maryland, and the pair met Monday with shop stewards and managers in Wichita to explain each side’s needs ahead of talks.