No word yet on Safe Air job cuts

Talks between Safe Air, Air New Zealand and the Ministry of Defence are continuing, but have so far been fruitless.

Defence Minister Wayne Mapp said no defence work had yet been found which could be sent on to Woodbourne engineering firm Safe Air.

He told The Marlborough Express at the beginning of March the Royal New Zealand Air Force would attempt to transfer or bring forward work to save jobs at the troubled Air New Zealand subsidiary.

Air New Zealand spokeswoman Tracy Mills said there was no further update. Safe Air announced in February that 100 jobs would be cut following ongoing delays in receiving RNZAF C-130 Hercules aircraft from Canadian company L-3 Communications for outfitting.

The 2 1/2-year delay stemmed from a software fault that L-3 had struggled to fix.

However, Dr Mapp said the company was about to upload a "final version" of the problem-dogged software to the aircraft.

The software had not been fully tested, but Dr Mapp said L-3 was "pretty confident" it would work.

The final number of redundancies will be announced on March 31.

- The Marlborough Express

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