Rolls-Royce To Cut 4,600 Jobs

From AVweb

By Kate O'Connor

Rolls-Royce announced on Thursday that it will be eliminating 4,600 jobs—nearly 10 percent of the positions at the company—over the next 24 months as part of a company-wide restructuring plan. The UK-based engineering firm says that after an initial cost of £500 million ($665 million), it expects the restructuring to reduce annual costs by £400 million ($532 million) by 2020. The first third of the job cuts are expected to be made by the end of 2018.

In the same statement in which it announced the job cuts, Rolls-Royce reiterated that it intends to focus on civil aerospace going forward. The company says it currently has orders for over 2,700 engines for wide-body aircraft and business jets and plans to increase engine production “targeting over 600 wide-body engines a year by the end of this decade.” According to the company, it has launched six new engines for the civilian market including the Trent XWB and the Pearl 15.

Rolls-Royce has been struggling with its Trent 1000 engine—primarily used on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner—since issues involving excessive wear were discovered in 2016. Due to the durability problem, an AD was issued in April 2018 limiting extended single-engine operations to within 140 minutes of an airport for some 787s equipped with Trent 1000s. The company has also recently had trouble with parts shortages for the engines. It has been reported that Rolls-Royce has spent almost £1 billion ($1.3 billion) to address the issue so far.