Boeing will cut 10% of its workforce as the strike halts aircraft production

Boeing plans to cut about 10% of its workforce, about 17,000 people, in the coming months as it continues to lose money and tries to deal with a strike that is crippling production of the company's best-selling airline planes.

New CEO Kelly Ortberg told employees in a memo Friday that the job cuts will include executives, managers and employees.

The company has approximately 170,000 employees worldwide, many of whom work at manufacturing facilities in the states of Washington and South Carolina.

Boeing has already imposed temporary furloughs rolling in, but Ortberg said those will be suspended because of the upcoming layoffs.

The company will further delay the rollout of a new plane, the 777X, to 2026 instead of 2025. It will stop making the cargo version of its 767 jet in 2027 after finishing current orders.

Boeing has lost more than $25 billion since the start of 2019.

About 33,000 union machinists have been on strike since September 14. Two days of talks this week failed to produce an agreement and Boeing filed an unfair-labor-practice complaint against the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.

As it announced the layoffs, Boeing also gave a preliminary report on its third-quarter financial results — and the news isn't good for the company.

Boeing said it burned through $1.3 billion in cash in the quarter and lost $9.97 per share. Industry analysts had expected the company to lose $1.61 per share in the quarter, according to a FactSet survey, but analysts were likely unaware of some of the biggest write-downs Boeing announced Friday — a $2.6 billion charge related to the 777X, a $400 delay. million for the 767, and $2 billion for defense and space programs, including the new Air Force One jet, a space capsule for NASA and a military fuel tanker.

The Arlington, Virginia-based company said it had $10.5 billion in cash and marketable securities as of Sept. 30. Boeing will release full third-quarter numbers on Oct. 23.

The strike has a direct impact on cash burn because Boeing receives half or more of the cost of the aircraft when it is delivered to customers. The strike halted production of the 737 Max, Boeing's best-selling plane, and the 777x and 767s. The company still builds the 787 at a nonunion plant in South Carolina.

“Our business is in a tough spot, and it's hard to overstate the challenges we face together,” Ortberg told employees. He said the situation “requires tough decisions and we need to make structural changes to ensure we can remain competitive and deliver for our customers in the long term.”

Ortberg took over at Boeing in August, becoming the troubled company's third CEO in less than five years. He is a longtime aerospace-industry executive but a Boeing outsider.

The new CEO faces many challenges in turning the company around.

The Federal Aviation Administration stepped up its investigation into the agency after a panel blew off a Max during an Alaska Airlines flight in January. Boeing has agreed to plead guilty and pay fines for conspiracy to defraud tied to the Max, but relatives of the 346 people who died in the two Max crashes want harsher penalties.

And Boeing gained attention for all the wrong reasons when NASA decided that a Boeing spacecraft wasn't safe enough to carry two astronauts home from the International Space Station.