Bombardier says weak market demand for its decision to pause the Learjet program. Since the economic downturn, the Montreal-based aerospace company has experienced a continued weakness of the Light aircraft category.

Learjet 85 Production (Photo: Bombardier)

Bombardier constantly monitors its product strategy and development priorities, said Pierre Beaudoin, President and Chief Executive Officer, Bombardier Inc. Given the weakness of the market, we made the difficult decision to pause the Learjet 85 program at this time. We will focus our resources on our two other clean-sheet aircraft programs under development,CSeries and Global 7000/8000, for which we see tremendous market potential. Both programs are progressing well.

Due to this development, the company has decided to cut about 1,000 employees from its Learjet business in 2015, specifically at  its sites in Querétaro, Mexico and Wichita, U.S. A severance provision of approximately $25 million will be recorded as a special item during the first quarter of 2015.

The Wichita and Querétaro sites will remain critical facilities in key markets. Wichita is a multifaceted facility and is the location of final assembly activities for the Learjet 70 and Learjet 75 aircraft, the Bombardier Flight Test Center as well as a Service Center. In addition to contributing to many of Bombardier’s aircraft programs, the Querétaro site recently completed its Global 7000/8000 aft fuselage manufacturing building.

Bombardier will also write down the value of its Learjet 85 program, resulting in a pretax charge of about US$1.4 billion in the companys fourth quarter.

The company will also record US$25 million for severance in its first quarter of 2015.