The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Boeing will cut 4,000 jobs from its commercial airplane unit.

Earlier in the week Continental Airlines announced it would defer an order for over $2 billion worth of Boeing airplanes until 2008, buying only 20 planes from a planned order of 56. Meanwhile, Midwest Express announced plans to slow the delivery schedule for new Boeing aircraft from 12 per year to 4 per year.

Here's the end of the story:

For Boeing the deferrals are another blow in what has been a dismal aviation market. The company may be able to replace the deliveries with other airline orders, but if Continental's move is the beginning of a trend, it could prove more serious.

In late June, Boeing handed out 60-day layoff notices, effective August 22, to 845 employees mostly in the commercial airplanes unit. It was unclear whether the latest announced cuts included these employees.

Boeing has cut about 34,735 jobs as part of a retrenchment that started in December 2001. The latest round will carry the company well past its initial target of cutting 35,000 jobs.

This raises several questions:

1. If a company is looking for a place to build a new airplane, wouldn't a city with tens of thousands of laid-off, experienced airplane factory workers be irresistibly attractive?
2. If you can't sell your existing aircraft models, will you be able to generate sales for a brand new model still on the drawing boards?
3. Do we want our city's economy to be even more dependent than it already is on this industry?

UPDATE (7/18/2003): The WSJ link has expired, so here's a link to a story about the Boeing cuts in the Olympia, Washington, Olympian.