Jetliner Parts Maker to Lay Off 1,300 Workers : Aerospace: New cuts by Chula Vista-based Rohr Inc. come amid slumping sales. It has laid off 2,000 people in 18 months.

Struggling aircraft components maker Rohr Inc. said it will lay off 1,300 more employees over the next four months to keep cutting costs in the face of slumping jetliner sales.

The Chula Vista, Calif.-based company said the layoffs will cut its employment worldwide to 5,700. The company has already laid off about 2,000 people in the last 18 months as commercial aircraft orders have slowed. In mid-1989, Rohr employed 12,000 people.

Rohr spokesman Mark Bergherr declined to say which plants will be affected by the pending layoffs. Besides Chula Vista, the company’s facilities include plants in Riverside and Moreno Valley in Riverside County. Rohr has already closed a plant in Auburn, Wash., and plans to close another in Hagerstown, Md.

The company is a leading maker of engine housings called nacelles. It also produces aircraft pylons and thrust reversers, which slow a jet when it lands. Commercial aircraft components account for about 90% of its business.

Bergherr said Rohr still faces “a couple of tough years” before the commercial aircraft market improves.

Standard & Poor’s analyst David Sotnick, in a report earlier this month, said Rohr’s “long-term business prospects are considered fairly healthy” because of the company’s “strong market position,” but he noted that the jetliner market currently is “in a severe downturn.”

As conditions worsened early this year, Rohr’s chairman and chief executive, Robert H. Goldsmith, took early retirement in January at age 63.

A Rohr director, James J. Kerley, became chairman, and Robert H. Rau was hired as president and chief executive in April after resigning as president of Irvine-based Parker Bertea, an aircraft parts unit of Parker-Hannifin Corp.