6 November 2008
Light aircraft manufacturer Mooney has said that it is ‘temporarily scaling back its production of airplanes’. Earlier this year the company <a href=’http://www.flyer.co.uk/news/newsfeed.php?artnum=731′ target=’_blank’>had cut 80 members of its workforce</a>, as it reduced its production targets from eight a month to five a month for the rest of this year.
According to the San Antonio Business Journal, the company is now planning to lay off a further 229 workers – mainly from manufacturing operations – leaving a total of around 90 people working at the Kerrville plant.
“These are temporary adjustments and they only affect our manufacturing operations,” Mooney spokesman Dave Franson told the Journal. “So our (other operations) will continue to operate normally and be staffed at the normal level. There will not be any change to existing or potential customers and we will deliver airplanes as scheduled.”
The workforce cuts are blamed on the economic situation.
Cessna, meanwhile, is also suggesting that job cuts may be on the way. Last week it sent a letter to its workforce saying that unspecified belt-tightening measures might be necessary; this week it’s suggesting that this will involve fewer piston aircraft deliveries in 2009 (although it’s still planning an increase in Citation Mustang numbers) and this will “result in a need to reduce our current workforce level”.
More details are expected over the next few days.
Just down the road from Cessna in Wichita, Kansas, manufacturer Hawker Beechcraft also announced this week that it was losing around 500 employees.
