Some 350 employees were handed 60-day layoff notices last month in the latest round of workforce reductions. The company insisted at the time that the layoffs wouldn't affect its agreement with state and local officials to keep its aircraft operations and at least 4,000 jobs in Kansas until 2020 in exchange for $45 million in incentives.
Hawker Beechcraft can trace its Kansas roots to Beech Aircraft Corp., a company founded by Walter and Olive Ann Beech that began making aircraft in the 1930s. Beech Aircraft became a subsidiary of Massachusetts-based Raytheon Co. in 1980 but continued to build its planes in Wichita until the 2007 sale to Hawker Beechcraft.
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