Airbus has detailed proposed reductions that will reduce the headcount of its defence unit by approximately 5% over the next 18 months, with just over 2,000 posts to be removed.
The European giant in mid-October announced a planned rationalisation of its Airbus Defence & Space unit, at that time stating that up to 2,500 jobs could be cut.
Updating its activity on 4 December, the company said: “The planned measures are expected to result in a reduction of 2,043 positions within the division.
“They aim to reduce the company’s fixed cost base, with almost all of the positions affected being so-called ‘overhead positions’ (management support functions not assigned to an individual programme or project),” it states.
The company’s struggling Space Systems business area will carry 55% of the planned reduction, with 1,128 positions to be removed. Some 618 “headquarters” posts will also go, along with reductions in its Air Power (250) and Connected Intelligence (47) areas.
Airbus details the steps as affecting 689 jobs in Germany, 540 in France, 477 in the UK, 303 in Spain, and 34 in the rest of the world.
“It is expected that these measures will be complete by mid-2026,” it says, adding that “compulsory [redundancy] actions are not planned”.
At the time of the business transformation announcement, Airbus Defence & Space chief executive Michael Schoellhorn said the process would make the unit “faster, leaner and more competitive”.
Airbus’s financial performance in the first nine months of this year included its defence and space unit recording an order intake of €10.9 billion ($11.4 billion), while reporting an adjusted EBIT of -€661 million.
