HomeHawker Beechcraft to Close Little Rock Facility, Reduce Arkansas Workforce

[gotyacovered]

coincidental with the election results? probably not. but awefully interesting. we get to look forward to a bunch of these over the new few years. 

http://www.arkansasbusiness.com/article/88547/hawker-beechcraft-to-close-little-rock-facility-reduce-arkansas-workforce?utm_source=enews_110712&utm_medium=email&utm_content=breaking-news&utm_campaign=newsletter

Hawker Beechcraft Corp. of Wichita, Kan., today announced it would close its Hawker Beechcraft Services facility in Little Rock and reduce its remaining workforce.

The company stated in a release that the changes were part of a post-Chapter 11 bankruptcy assessment of the company's future.

The release said that facilities in Mesa, Ariz., and San Antonio will be closed along with the Little Rock facility.

"Approximately 240 employees will be affected in these locations," the release said.

About 170 additional workers will also be laid off between the Little Rock Completions Center and Hawker Beechcraft Corp. in Wichita, Kan. More than half of this reduction will occur in Little Rock, the release stated.

"While extremely difficult decisions, these closures and reductions in force will get the company closer to what we envision for our go-forward plan that focuses on turboprop, piston, special mission and trainer/attack aircraft, as well as our parts, maintenance, repairs and refurbishment business," the release said.

An email from Hawker Beechcraft stated that the company will not provide specific layoff numbers for any of the various locations, nor will it comment any further than the initial release.

[MDH]

The combining off Beech and Hawker had failure written all over it from the start in my opinion.  Also the acquisition of the Diamond Jet, now the Beech 400 was idiotic.  The Diamond was a horrible design on many levels.  Hawker's aren't bad aircraft, but they aren't great.  Beech had a good thing going between the Turbo Prop and Piston market, but then they saw dollar signs and sought a quick and easy way into the small jet market to compete with Cessna and Lear who were already established and well known.  Add to this the abject failures of the Starship and Premier(which carried over many of the bad design decisions that were present in the Diamond) and I'm surprised they lasted as long as they did.  They should have stuck to what they knew, which is what we on the maintenance side have been saying for years.

All that said I hate to hear about the folks in LIT getting cut, that really does suck.  I hope they can quickly find other work.  If any of you are reading this and are interested in doing avionics work for next to nothing we really need a tech