Piper Aircraft to Lay Off 60

Following a recent trend in the aviation industry, Vero Beach, Florida-based Piper Aircraft announced today that it will lay off 60 employees. Piper joins Cesna and Hawker, two other civilian aviation companies which announced layoffs last week. The layoffs represent about seven percent of Piper’s total workforce.

Despite the recent layoffs, Piper has actually seen a net gain in employees during the last twelve months. Piper went on a hiring spree at the end of 2009 and into 2010 in order to ramp up production on its first jet model, the Piper PA-47 “PiperJet”. Even after the layoffs, Piper will 250 more employees than the 580 it had at this time last year.