Big Layoffs Planned For Cessna

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed)
Nov 15th 2008 at 6:02PM

Last week I briefly touched on the potential layoffs for jetmaker Cessna, Now the Wichita Eagle has all the grisly details. It appears that Cessna Aircraft will cut about 500 jobs in Wichita. The laid-off workers will be given 60-day notices in the next few weeks.

The news follows on the heels of an incentives package worth tens of millions of dollars from the state designed to ensure that Cessna would build its Citation Columbus plant in Wichita. It still plans to do that and by 2014 there should be 1,000 people working there. Unfortunately that is a long way off. For now there are layoffs both at the Wichita plant where Cessna employs 12,000 people and in Oregon where 165 employees will be laid off from the Bend, Oregon plant. Cessna was planning to deliver a record 535 business jets in 2009 but some of the customers who were slated for shipment have asked to defer delivery until the economy is a bit rosier.

Another Wichita-based aviation company Hawker Beechcraft cut five percent of its work force on Friday about 490 people as it lowered target production numbers.The aviation companies are bullish on their long term survival and see this trimming back as a necessity to keep going in lean times.

Tags: cessna, jobs, layoffs