The aviation supplier Diehl Aviation announces the shedding of 1,400 jobs across Germany.
This also affects the company's branch in Gilching.
Asto-Park and Oberpfaffenhofen special airport are still having less of an impact on the Corona crisis than feared.
Gilching - The global crisis in the aviation industry as a result of the corona pandemic is now also having an impact on the Starnberg district.
The supplier Diehl Aviation wants to cut every fourth of its former 6,000 jobs by 2022.
According to the company, this will affect all locations - including those in the Gilching industrial area Friedrichshafener Straße directly at the Oberpfaffenhofen special airport.
This emerges from a “future concept” that the management presented to the works council on Monday.
According to reports, 230 employees work in Gilching, and organizationally it belongs to the Dresden production site with a further 270 employees.
According to Diehl spokesman David Vosskuhl, both locations are affected by the restructuring with a total of 100 jobs.
Operational dismissals are "the last resort," said Vosskuhl.
The company relies on partial retirement, voluntary layoffs and a group job exchange.
The works council will work through the concept in the coming weeks and approach the employees, said Vosskuhl.
Diehl Aviation produces the technology for on-board toilets
Diehl Aviation is one of five subgroups of the Diehl Group, which was founded in 1957 and which took over AOA Apparatebau Gauting in 2014.
The supplier develops and produces the technology for on-board toilets in Gilching and Dresden, i.e. everything that has to do with water pipes, and also smoke detectors for the aircraft.
Customers include almost all well-known aircraft manufacturers.
Diehl Aviation's turnover in 2019 was 1.5 billion euros.
For the year 2022, Diehl expects only slightly more than half of this turnover.
"Airlines and aircraft manufacturers are assuming that it will take years before the pre-crisis level is reached again," said a statement from the company.
For Prof. Christian Juckenack from the airport operator Triwo, developments like those at Diehl are no surprise.
"We are seeing major changes in user needs in aviation," he states in an interview with Starnberger Merkur.
This affects suppliers and especially large airports.
"But the topic has not yet caught on at our small special airport." That is due to the shipyard operations of the international companies around, which would accept orders from all over the world.
Then there are the topics of research and development with a view to flying taxis and drones, "they are at liberty".
Not to mention the intensive collaboration with the German Aerospace Center (DLR).
Juckenack speaks of an overarching transformation process.
“Maybe there is a push effect for alternative drives.” Of course, he is also worried, “but they are not comparable to those of a commercial airport.” Apart from that, he can rely on a very traditional workforce from the times of Dornier.
Juckenack does not understand complaints about special airports
Juckenack understands the complaints about the special airport, which is a business location with 7,000 jobs, all the less.
"That irritates me when you reduce it to the noise factor in these times." The overall range "makes the matter international and sustainable".
He also does not expect long-term investments in the location to be postponed.
“That applies to new buildings and also to technology,” he says.
Thorben Fabian from the Asto Group quickly got the bad news about his tenant Diehl Aviation.
So far, the local companies have come through the pandemic well, he says, and says: “We didn't have to pay any company hourly rent.” Obviously, the companies in Asto-Park near the airport are occupying niches “from which reports of success are more likely to come”.
Interest in office and company buildings is also unabated.
Just last week, a company asked for 5000 square meters of space.
In the summer, Asto celebrated the groundbreaking of the new high-tech building called “Mäander” in the Gilching Süd industrial park (we reported).
“That was certainly brave of us.
But probably also right. ”One or the other competitor has put his plans on hold.
"That will now benefit us."