Aircraft
CEO Boisture Cautiously Optimistic about Future of ‘Smaller More Agile’ Hawker Beechcraft
“Cautious optimism” for the current business aviation market likely describes the consensus of opinion of the business aviation industry here at EBACE.

“Cautious optimism” for the current business aviation market likely describes the consensus of opinion of the business aviation industry here at EBACE. It is, at least, the view of Bill Boisture, chairman and CEO, Hawker Beechcraft Corp., who told AIN that his plans for transforming the Wichita, Kansas OEM into “a smaller, more agile company” are progressing.

“It’s a right-now plan,” he said. “We spent most of 2010 planning what we would do and then started implementing parts of that with the [planned early 2012] closure of the plant in Salina [Kansas], and in October announcing the closure of several major facilities on the Wichita footprint. So by year-end, we will be about a million square feet smaller, in terms of occupied real estate, than we had been.”