Aviation systems maker Rockwell Collins Inc. announced it will lay off more than 400 employees here later this year as it closes its airline interiors manufacturing operations in Tucson.
The company issued an announcement to its suppliers earlier Thursday, notifying them it would close the Tucson plant it acquired in its purchase last year of B/E Aerospace and would be moving the “Super First Class” manufacturing operations to another location, which was not identified in the news release.
“Rockwell Collins has made the difficult decision to permanently close its Tucson, Arizona, operations due to reduced demand for the Super First Class aircraft seating produced by the facility,” said company spokesman Josh Baynes in a written statement.
The closure, effective Sept. 30, will eliminate about 413 full-time positions.
Baynes said employees will be offered severance packages and outplacement services and would be eligible for other positions in the company.
Its 142,500-square-foot plant is at 1851 S. Pantano Road, just south of East 22nd Street.
It was once the location of Florida-based aircraft interiors maker B/E Aerospace, which made luxury aircraft interiors and employed 900 workers here as of early 2017. The number of jobs there had declined over the last year, said local economic officials.
Rockwell Collins had a number of skilled manufacturing jobs that paid between $14 and $25 an hour, city economic development officials confirmed. The company has shifted away from primarily engineering jobs when it first opened here, focusing on manufacturing and assembly line types of jobs.
The overall economic impact of the Rockwell Collins closing was not immediately known.
Local economic development officials are optimistic that many of the employees laid off later this year will be absorbed by local aerospace and aviation manufacturing companies as their skills are highly sought.
With more than 25,000 employees in more than 200 companies in the Tucson area, it is estimated the aerospace-related industries generate more than $6 billion in sales annually.
Tucson Mayor Jonathan Rothschild said city officials will reach out to Rockwell Collins to discuss its plans to close the plant. He said the city will continue to focus on its economic development efforts, as competition increases among cities to lure high-paying jobs in such a volatile economy.
Pima County is also expected to offer resources to laid-off workers through its One-Stop workforce development system but cannot start offering those resources until it gets official notification of the layoffs from the Rockwell Collins.
To do that, the company must file a federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, a requirement for companies with more than 100 employees to give notice 60 days in advance of plant closings and mass layoffs.
As of Thursday night, the WARN notice had not been filed.
Rockwell Collins arrived in Tucson in April 2017, when the company completed its $8.6 billion acquisition of B/E Aerospace.
United Technologies Corp., a multinational company and defense contractor, announced its plans to buy Rockwell Collins late last year in a $23 billion deal of cash and UTC stock. The deal would create an aerospace giant that makes plane seats, landing systems and flight control decks for commercial and military planes.
UTC said that after the deal is completed, which it expects to happen within a year, it would combine its aerospace unit with Rockwell Collins and rename it Collins Aerospace Systems. That unit is expected to bring in more than $23 billion in sales a year.
Founded in 1933 as Collins Radio Co., Cedar Rapids, Iowa-based Rockwell Collins is a leading provider of avionics, communications and other aviation electronics.
