Rolls-Royce expected to announce job cuts

Aero-engine giant Rolls-Royce is expected to announce the loss of 3,000 to 4,000 jobs.

The company's bosses are due to give details of the cut-backs following their monthly board meeting in London.

The brunt of redundancies is expected to be borne by the company's main UK plant in Derby where about 13,000 people are employed.

The cuts have been brought about by the air travel downturn following last month's terror attacks on the US and are expected to be over and above the 2,000 job losses the firm announced last summer.

Rolls-Royce management would give no indication of the extent of losses ahead of the announcement.

A spokesman said: "We are completing a very detailed series of discussions with our customers to find out what impact on them, and therefore on us, the events of September 11 has had."

This week the company's American rivals Pratt & Whitney announced about 2,500 job losses and a similar number of redundancies were announced last week by another competitor GE.

Rolls-Royce currently turns out Trent 700 and 800 engines and is about to put its Trent 500 - which will power the new long-range Airbus A340 aircraft - into production.

Still in development is the Trent 900 which is due to power the new Airbus superjumbo, the A380.

Rolls-Royce's other UK plants are in Bristol, Coventry and Scotland.