4,600 Employees Will Be Out Of Work By March

Cessna confirmed this week reports that surfaced earlier this month -- the planemaker must shed an additional 2,000 jobs over previous estimates, bringing announced job losses to date to around 4,600.

In an email to employees, Cessna Chairman and CEO Jack Pelton termed the cuts "profound," but necessary, due to slumping sales and global economic conditions "unprecedented in recent memory."

"It's extremely difficult to forecast this year's delivery number because, ultimately, it will depend on how the economy and other factors affect customer orders and cancellations," Pelton wrote in the memo, reported by Forbes. "As a result it will be necessary for us to further reduce our production rates based on our current outlook for a weakening order book. That, unfortunately, means we will also have to further reduce our work force."

As ANN reported, the latest cuts are expected to be completed by the end of March. Company spokesman Bob Stangarone said the cuts will be "across all areas and all salary levels," and came after Cessna spoke with its foreign customers about their future purchase plans in the face of the slumping economy.

Among the locations hardest hit will be Cessna's headquarters in Wichita, which will loose about a third of its 12,000-strong workforce. The Independence plant -- which produces the company's single engine piston line, and the Citation Mustang jet -- will lose 200 jobs, and 160 jobs will be cut from a parts plant in Columbus, GA.

Among the facilities hardest hit on a percentage basis is the former Columbia plant in Bend, OR, which will lose another 120 workers on top of 165 positions previously targeted for layoffs. Combined, those cuts represent over half the 450 people now employed there.

Cessna will also shutter a Toledo, OH service center that employs 67 workers.

Stangarone told the Associated Press Cessna plans to build 375 jet aircraft in 2009, the fewest in two years and nearly 100 planes less than in 2008. The planemaker hasn't determined how deep production cuts will run for its single-engine piston line.

FMI: www.cessna.com