Bombardier Aerospace will lay off 1,700 employees in a bid to contain costs after stretching out CSeries development by at least 12 months and seeing business and commercial aircraft orders decline in 2013.
Announced Tuesday in an internal memo to employees, the layoffs will be split between 1,100 in Canada and 600 in the US. Plants in Northern Ireland and Mexico are not affected, the company said.
Bombardier Aerospace currently has 38,350 employees worldwide and said the final layoff figure may be lower as it has 300 open positions, some of which could be filled by affected employees.
The Canadian manufacturer last made major layoffs in 2007, at the bottom of a financial downturn that saw the company abandon almost all new-product development in a bid to stay solvent. A year later, Bombardier launched development of the CSeries airliner and begun hiring again.