Fokker’s Fight to Stay Aloft Crumples; 5,600 Lose Their Jobs

Pioneering aviation firm Fokker, once a European byword for industrial expertise, collapsed Friday, ending 77 years of Dutch aircraft production and putting 5,600 people out of work in the biggest mass layoff in Dutch history.

The maker of regional aircraft, whose founder supplied triplanes to Germany during World War I, announced at a somber news conference that it had lost a desperate struggle to find a buyer and declared bankruptcy for three core units.

“This means the end of 77 years of aircraft history in the Netherlands,” Chairman Ben van Schaik told reporters.

Fokker, crippled by debt and heavy losses, had been kept limping along by state-guaranteed bridging credits while it frantically searched for a buyer since its German parent, Daimler-Benz, severed a cash lifeline in January.

“We have been fighting until the very last moment, that means until [Friday] morning, to keep Fokker in the air. However, we have not succeeded,” Van Schaik said, adding that he would leave the company.

Fokker workers, who had clung for weeks to flickering hopes of a rescue, blamed the Dutch government for not doing enough to stave off the firm’s collapse.

Ben Hom, who worked at Fokker’s Schiphol plant, said, “I’m devastated. . . . The final news was like a punch in the face.”

However, Prime Minister Wim Kok rejected any suggestion that the government had not done enough to head off the collapse, which he called a tragedy for the workers and their families. “You can’t go on pumping money into a company for which there is no durable future,” he told reporters.

The government, which had talked in vain through the night in a desperate effort to wrest a takeover bid from South Korea’s Samsung Aerospace, put the blame on weak airplane markets and state subsidies to rival manufacturers.

“The aircraft market is an example of a market which has gone rotten, in which governments play a big role, especially governments of large states . . . “ Dutch Economic Affairs Minister Hans Wijers told a news conference.

He said Fokker was also a victim of a rapid deterioration in market conditions that prompted “a sudden switch from a seller’s market to a buyer’s market.”

The bankruptcy of Fokker’s three units--bourse-listed NV Koninklijke Nederlandse Vliegtuigenfabriek Fokker and its Fokker Administration and Fokker Aircraft subsidiaries--put more than 5,600 employees out of work, although 960 will be offered jobs at divisions that escaped collapse.

These noncore businesses--electronics systems, aircraft maintenance and special products--will be lumped into Fokker Aviation and will continue to fly the Fokker flag, with a work force of about 2,500.

Still, Fokker said, it will have to find a new partner.

“It is the intention that Fokker Aviation will seek a partnership with another company that could further strengthen the company’s position,” court-appointed administrator Louis Deterink said.

Although Fokker will no longer make its famed regional jets, it pledged that the 1,130 planes it had sold worldwide would remain in service and continue to receive technical support.

Job centers across the Netherlands braced for a flood of Fokker workers.

The collapse also affected component suppliers such as Daimler-Benz, Short Bros. of Northern Ireland and Rolls-Royce of Britain.

Shorts Bros. said 1,000 jobs were under threat there as a result of Fokker’s collapse. A spokesman for Daimler-Benz Aerospace said 1,200 jobs could go in Germany. Rolls-Royce said it was too early to assess the impact on profit and jobs but that it expected to make a statement next week.