The aircraft manufacturer Boeing confirmed on Wednesday that it will reduce its overall workforce by about 10% to save money, when it is hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. The latter has reduced air transport and aircraft orders as much as possible. These job cuts will be via a voluntary departure program and dry layoffs and concern the civil aviation division, said general manager David Calhoun, in an internal letter to employees on the sidelines of the publication of first quarter results. Boeing, which also produces military and space equipment, employs around 160,000 people worldwide.
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"The marked reduction in demand for our products and services for the next few years simply cannot support the high levels of our production", explains David Calhoun, in a letter consulted by AFP. The pandemic, he adds, "has changed the way we live and work. It is changing our industry. We face completely unexpected challenges."
Travel restriction, social distancing and containment measures to stem the spread of covid-19 have reduced air traffic in the United States by more than 95%, according to David Calhoun, while airline revenues are expected to decrease. drop $ 314 billion this year.
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Immobilization of the 737 MAX model
In addition to the job cuts, Boeing will also reduce the production rates of the 787 and 777 / 777X long-haul aircraft to adapt to the new aerial landscape. The Seattle giant will only produce 10 787 aircraft per month from now until 2021, against 14 at the start of the year. It will gradually decrease this rate, to 7 planes in 2022. The production of the 777 and its replacement 777X will go from 5 planes per month currently to 3 planes in 2021.
That of the 737 MAX, suspended since January, will resume at "low rates" when this aircraft is returned to service in 2020 and will be established at 31 aircraft per month in 2021. Before the MAX grounded, Boeing produced 52 aircraft per month, before falling to 42 planes a few months after the accident of a copy of Ethiopian Airlines which left 157 dead on March 10, 2019 southeast of Addis Ababa.
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This accident, the second in five months of the MAX, led to the immobilization on the ground of this model and uncertainties still surround its date of return to service. Boeing is talking about mid-2020, but the pandemic should overturn this calendar and push the date until at least the end of the summer, industrial sources told AFP.
The setbacks of the MAX and the health crisis pushed Boeing into the red in the first quarter. The aircraft manufacturer has indeed recorded a net loss of $ 641 million, according to a statement released Wednesday. Quarterly sales plunged 26.2% year on year to $ 16.91 billion, weighed down by a drop of about a third in civil aircraft deliveries. In the first quarter of 2019, Boeing was profitable, with a profit of $ 2.1 billion.