LONDON - When a senior Rolls-Royce executive let slip to colleagues late last month that the aero-engine maker was considering up to 8,000 job cuts in response to the global aviation crisis, there was shock but equally a sense of fatalism among many workers, reports Peggy Hollinger for the Financial Times. Continue reading original article.
The Intelligent Aerospace take:
May 22, 2020 - Hollinger notes in her piece about Rolls-Royce aviation's COVID-19-related woes that the financial struggles in the sector may see the UK company return to a partnership with America's Pratt & Whitney.
In the near-term, however, Rolls-Royce will cut thousands of positions as the company tries to weather the coronavirus pandemic storm.
Nicolas Jouan, aerospace and defense analyst at GlobalData says of the layoffs, "Rolls-Royce arguably had no choice in the matter. Its business, as a pure-player of the engine and power system industry, is one of the most badly touched by the COVID-19 outbreak and is almost entirely reliant on the output of plane manufacturers Airbus and Boeing. The two companies have themselves announced staff and production cuts. The A350 and the B787 have dropped respectively to 6 and 10 units per month. Both models fly with Rolls-Royce’s Trent engine, whose market share in the wide-body segment climbed above 50% before the crisis. Rolls-Royce expects to save £1.3bn annualized through reorganisation - mostly relying on announced job cuts."
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Jamie Whitney, Associate Editor
Intelligent Aerospace
