Spirit halts production of 737 MAX, economic impact ensues

Spirit halts production of 737 MAX, economic impact ensues

2019-12-21 16:41:18

Spirit halts production of 737 MAX

Spirit Aerosystems is set to halt production of the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft starting January 1, after long standing issues with the plane.

Employees at the company said they are now wondering about their futures after the news broke Friday morning.

"Everyone's pretty scared," said Jonathan Bui, a Spirit employee. "It's kind of slow right now, but we got a lot of stuff to catch up on."

Spirit has not announced any layoffs at this point. However, the announcement comes just one year after they were far from uncertain on their financial future in December of 2018.

"We are going to hire an additional 1,400 employees, over and above the thousand that we announced last year," said Tom Gentile in 2018, CEO of the company.

Now, according to union representatives for the company, hiring has froze. In a statement the company saying the change will have, "an adverse impact on Spirit's business, financial condition, results of operations, and cash flow".

"Now everybody's on eight hour days," said Scotty Wilson, an employee at Spirit.

Wilson said he thinks the company is doing this to keep them employed. Experts agree.

"Spirit is going to want to keep every single person because they need them," said Jeremy Hill, director of the Center for Economic Development and Business Research at Wichita State University. "It's going to be a critical component for their competitiveness in the long run."

Hill said he thinks temporary layoffs with hardships may be in store for the company. During this, he said employees would receive unemployment benefits due to their union having things in place to protect the employees in these cases. It can even trickle down further, effecting the city of Wichita itself, especially during the holiday's.

"They're going to probably narrow down their shopping a little bit so they can use those funds to pay their monthly bills, electricity, things like that to keep their household moving forward," Hill said.

He said it could impact retail heavily with workers hesitant to spend since they are uncertain on the future. According to Hill it could also impact tourism and travel. However, inside the business, some employees are trying to stay positive.

"Everything is going to be OK, we just got to keep faith strong," said Anisha Richards, a Spirit employee. "We're going to be OK."

Employees are going on a holiday break right now with some returning around January 6. However, a lot of them are heading into the holiday's uncertain on what will happen when they return shortly after.

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