Boeing, a producer of airplanes, wants to concentrate on engineering and producing things, so this year, it aims to eliminate around 2,000 jobs in finance and human resources.
The company is making the change because it is putting more of its money and time into “developing products, services, and technology.”
Some of the jobs will be given to Tata Consulting Services, which is part of one of India’s largest business groups.
In the past few years, Boeing has had to deal with a number of problems, such as the grounding of its 737 Max after two fatal crashes.
“We have told our teams and will continue to tell them in a clear way that we expect some corporate support functions to have less staff,” the company told the BBC.
“As always, we’ll help affected teammates get back on their feet by giving them help and resources,” it said.
About a third of the jobs will be given to Bangalore-based Tata Consulting Services (also known as Bengaluru).
But Boeing also said it will keep hiring more people “with a focus on engineering and manufacturing.”
The company said it plans to hire another 10,000 people this year on top of the 15,000 people it hired in 2022.
After two deadly accidents involving its 737 Max passenger jet, the aviation giant has been trying to turn things around.
On October 29, 2018, 13 minutes after taking off from Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, Lion Air Flight 610 crashed into the Java Sea. All 189 people on board were killed.
Less than five (5) months later, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, a Boeing 737 Max that was going to Kenya, crashed just six minutes after taking off from Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. All of the 157 people on board died.
Later, it was found that both accidents were caused by mistakes in the way the planes were made, especially in the way they used a piece of software called the “Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System” (MCAS).
The system was made to help pilots who had flown earlier versions of the 737, so they wouldn’t have to pay for extra training to fly the new model.
But sensor failures caused it to stop working, and in both cases, the plane went into a fatal dive that the pilots could not stop.
The 737 Max plane can now fly again in most countries around the world. This is because the plane was fixed, and the pilots were trained.
