Business: Stability Comes to Aerospace

The prognosis: no thrills, but also no chills

For the highly cyclical U.S. aerospace industry, stability had been as elusive as a wispy contrail against a clear blue sky. Just when things were going well, something would go wrong. Recession, the climax of the Apollo moon-landing program, President Carter's scrapping of the B-l bomber project: all these riddled industry profits and caused huge layoffs in Southern California, Seattle and other aerospace centers. Currently, the industry is making an upward thrust, fueled by fat military and commercial order backlogs. But the present climb is...

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