Originally Posted by
DaveReidUK
Does anyone seriously believe Boeing will be able to continue to employ the remaining 90%.
Local news is reporting that the cut will be much more than 10% in commercial aircraft - presumably there will be little impact on Defense and Space - the 10% is a company wide number. Commercial accounts for roughly half of total employment so do the math...
Also reporting they plan to be back up to ~30 737 MAX aircraft/month by the middle of next year, 777 and 787 production will be reduced, while 747 and 767 production will remain at the current rate.
No surprise about the 767 - all 767 production is either freighters or KC-46 (and cargo is the one part of aviation that's still going strong), but even though all 747 production is freighters, I've been expecting to see an announcement that the 747 production was going to end. The vendor that makes the 747 fuselage panels shut down that factory recently (after doing a 'build ahead' for the 747s currently ordered) - so if Boeing wants to keep the 747 in production they either need to make the investment to bring the fuselage in-house, or find someone else to manufacture those parts. Even though I suspect most of the tooling still exists, re-establishing that capability will mean a significant investment to keep the 747 line going.
It makes me think that Boeing has reason to believe they are going to get more orders for the 747-8F in the near future.