US Aerospace Sales Seen Rising Modestly In 2009

US Aerospace Sales Seen Rising Modestly In 2009

(NSI News Source Info) WASHINGTON - December 11, 2008: U.S. aerospace industry sales are set to grow a modest 2.2 percent in 2009 from what would have been rung up this year if not for a strike at Boeing Co, the sector's chief trade group said on Wednesday. Aerospace sales

-- including civil and military aircraft, missile and space-related hardware

-- are on pace to hit $204 billion this year, said the Aerospace Industries Association. This would be a rise of 2.1 percent, a lower growth rate than in recent years but a record sales figure for the fifth year in a row, said the AIA. For 2009, sales should reach $214 billion, "a figure that is about 2.2 percent more than the total the industry would have achieved this year had a work stoppage not impacted the 2008 bottom line," the trade group said in its annual year-end review and forecast. A 58-day strike by Boeing's 27,000 machinists shut down its commercial aircraft plants from Sept. 6 to Nov. 2. U.S. aerospace exports are expected to rise 2.1 percent in 2008 to $99.2 billion, from $97.2 billion last year, fueling a foreign trade surplus of about $61 billion, little changed from 2007, AIA said, referring to this as the largest trade surplus of any U.S. manufacturing sector. The industry group

-- whose members include Lockheed Martin Corp, Boeing and Northrop Grumman and many other companies

-- has begun playing up the number of jobs it creates in an apparent effort to protect lucrative arms programs under the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama. The group has launched an advertising campaign that says the aerospace industry supports two million middle-class jobs spread over 30,000 companies, many of them small suppliers, in all 50 states.