|
|
|
Bombardier to reduce jet production, cut 715 jobs |
Bloomberg/Montreal
Bombardier Inc, the world’s third-largest maker of commercial aircraft, said it will slow production of its CRJ model and cut 715 jobs because of weak demand for the regional passenger jet.
Severance costs will be about $10mn, Montreal-based Bombardier said yesterday in a statement. The worker reductions at plants in the Montreal area also reflect lower demand for the Bombardier 415 amphibious aircraft.
The company cancelled an order in August for 15 regional aircraft from Italy’s Myair.com after the country’s civil aviation authority revoked the carrier’s licence. Bombardier hasn’t announced any regional jet orders since Guy Hachey, president of the aerospace unit, said in September he was hoping to find new customers for the aircraft.
“Airlines are going through a difficult year,” Benoit Poirier, a Montreal-based analyst at Desjardins Securities, said in a interview yesterday.
“Airbus and Boeing have had to defer or cancel a lot of orders, and Bombardier is no exception.”
The latest job losses are in addition to about 4,360 layoffs announced at Bombardier Aerospace this year, the company said yesterday.
“There are not enough projected CRJ aircraft sales to maintain the current production plans,” Hachey said in the statement.
Among the cuts announced yesterday, 200 jobs are being permanently eliminated, and 515 shop-floor workers will be put on a union-recall list in the event business picks up, Marc Duchesne, a company spokesman, said.
Bombardier Aerospace has more than 29,000 employees worldwide and more than 17,000 in Canada, he said.
Duchesne declined to say how much the company will curtail CRJ production. Bombardier’s backlog of CRJ orders was 116 aircraft as of July 31, and the company delivered 37 of the jets in the first seven months of this year, he said.
“The CRJ market is not dead,” Duchesne said. “We believe over the next 20 years, there will be global demand for 5,800 new 60-to-99-passenger jets worldwide. This is exactly the market niche for the CRJ.”
The CRJ models can seat 50 to 90 passengers and a new 100- seat jet is scheduled to enter service next year.
Empresa Brasileira de Aeronautica SA, Bombardier’s chief competitor in the production of jets that seat 100 or fewer passengers, also is facing lower demand.
Embraer, as the Brazilian jet maker is known, said in June it expected demand for jetliners to keep declining for “many months” and forecast a “definite recovery” may only take place by the end of 2010 or early 2011.
The largest commercial planemakers are Toulouse, France- based Airbus SAS and Chicago-based Boeing Co
Meanwhile Malaysia Airlines yesterday said Airbus was delaying delivery of the carrier’s first A380 superjumbo aircraft by eight months.
Managing director and chief executive Azmil Zahruddin said MAS will now take delivery of its first A380 in August 2011 instead of January 2011.
“We have never requested for the A380s to be delayed; all delays have been at Airbus’ request,” he told Dow Jones Newswires.
The six aircraft were initially supposed to be delivered from January 2007. |
|
|
|
