Bombardier is laying off 800 workers at its US plants in Tucson, Arizona, and Wichita, Kansas. Most of the cuts will come at its Tucson completion centre where 550 workers will lose their jobs over the next 12 months. Another 250 jobs will go in Wichita within the next 90 days. The reductions are in addition to the 3,800 worldwide redundancies - 5% of its payroll - Bombardier announced in September.
The UK's Westland Helicopters, producer of the EH101, Lynx and WAH-64 helicopters, is to lay off 950 people as it closes its Weston-super-Mare plant and cuts the workforce by 600 at Yeovil in response to the end of production of 66 EH101s for the Royal Navy.Activity will pick up again in late 2003 when the company starts production of 14 multirole EH101s for the Danish navy, says Westland. After this order has been completed, the firm will start output of a further 12 EH101s for the Portuguese armed forces, which chose Westland's product over the Eurocopter Cougar Mk2+ and Sikorsky S-92.
Source: Flight International
