Raytheon Technology Company has cut 15000 employees and 4000 contractor positions, mainly in the company's General Benefit and Collins Aviation divisions, due to reduced commercial aviation sales caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact of Chinese countermeasures. CEO Greg Hayes said on the company's earnings conference call on Tuesday. This aviation giant located in Waltham, Massachusetts, is the latest company to announce losses as the pandemic has left commercial airlines struggling, losing tens of thousands of jobs and millions of profits. Hayes expects that this niche market will not experience a significant rebound, but will see a "long and slow recovery" within a few years. We expect commercial air transportation to not recover to the level of 2019 at least until 2023. Of course, this depends on the timing of widely distributed vaccines. Hayes said, "In the near future, we expect commercial air transportation to gradually recover, especially considering the recent surge in global (coronavirus) cases.

Hayes said, "As you know, we set positive goals in the first quarter to cut costs by approximately $2 billion and take action to save approximately $4 billion in cash, which made the layoffs difficult but necessary.

The ongoing personnel actions will reflect a 20% layoff in two departments, including temporary leave and recruitment freeze. Hayes said that in the merger with United Technologies in April this year, the company had planned to lay off 1000 employees, most of whom were company related.

The company also reduced its infrastructure by over 20%, covering an area of 31 million square feet, exceeding its earlier merger target of 10%. Hayes said that even after the pandemic subsides, it will continue to adopt increased remote work arrangements as part of a multi-year strategy to cut costs.

A aerospace parts factory announced in western North Carolina is still under construction, and Hayes said the company will need production capacity when demand recovers. He said, "I believe that by the end of 2023, when this technology goes online, we will see some kind of return to normalcy in the commercial aviation industry, and Pratt will have lower cost and higher degree of automation production facilities.

According to the third quarter data released by Raytheon, Pratt&Whitney incurred a loss of $615 million in operating profit for the quarter, compared to a profit of $520 million for the same period in 2019. Pratt's military sales increased by 11%, partly due to the production of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Collins achieved an operating profit of $526 million this quarter, but this figure decreased by 58% compared to the previous year. Thor's commercial after-sales business decreased by 51% and 52% respectively at Pratt&Whitney and Collins Airlines, while the company's military business SSPC increased. Raytheon's intelligence, space and missile, and defense departments offset some of the losses as the company announced quarterly sales of $14.7 billion and operating profit of $434 million. Thor executives are optimistic about the backlog of orders exceeding $70 billion in the defense business, and this quarter, the department announced $928 million in classified bookings.