Aerospace Industry

The major players in a key industry file for bankruptcy protection with the hope of reshaping operations quickly and coming back to compete more strongly. But it's not the automakers; it's the airlines, which just a few years ago underwent a wrenching restructuring in Bankruptcy Court that fundamentally altered the travel industry. Circumstances are different. But with Chrysler's filing for bankruptcy protection Thursday, and General Motors Corp.

In one of the nation's largest settlements in a whistle-blower case, Northrop Grumman Corp. has agreed to pay the federal government $325 million to resolve claims that TRW, which it acquired in 2002, provided defective parts for a spy satellite program in the 1990s.

The Air Force is reviewing decades-old contracts to determine whether manufacturers of U.S. fighter jets bear responsibility for a defect that caused one of the planes to break apart in flight late last year, officials said Thursday. An investigation of the November crash of an F-15 showed that one of several support beams in the plane was thinner than design specifications required. That faulty part caused a failure that split the plane in two.

The Justice Department on Monday announced the indictment and arrest of a longtime aerospace worker in Southern California for allegedly passing classified documents to China in an elaborate espionage endeavor that spanned two decades and exposed trade secrets from the space shuttle, the Delta IV rocket and the C-17 military transport aircraft. Dongfan Chung, 72, a native of China who became a naturalized U.S.

Aerospace giant Northrop Grumman Corp. said Wednesday that it was suspending the hiring of thousands of engineers in Southern California after a ruling by a federal auditing agency left its $35-billion Air Force contract to build aerial refueling tankers in limbo.

The chronically troubled effort to build a new fleet of aerial refueling tankers for the Air Force was delayed yet again after Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced Wednesday that the competition that selected Northrop Grumman Corp. was flawed and would be opened for the third time in seven years. The decision is a blow to the Century City-based aerospace giant, which was the surprise winner of the $35-billion contract over archrival Boeing Co. in February.

At Boeing Co.'s sprawling satellite-making complex in El Segundo, engineers for decades pioneered space systems that helped vastly alter the way we communicate by telephone and watch television today. But in recent years, the workload has sputtered under a cloud of slow orders, and the aerospace giant is now hoping for a lifeline from an upcoming Pentagon contract potentially worth more than $15 billion.

A dozen Boeing Co. machinists huddled over an oil-drum fire in the chilly morning drizzle, hooting as white trucks periodically cruised past them and into the gates of the massive airplane assembly plant. Belonging to a North Carolina contractor, the trucks carried parts for Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner -- which would be under construction inside were the union machinists not hurtling catcalls outside, locked in a seven-week-old strike that some estimate is costing Boeing $100 million a day.

Boeing Co. and machinists union leaders agreed on tentative terms for a contract that if approved by members would end the third-longest strike in the union's 73-year history and reopen the plane maker's closed factories. Agreement on a four-year contract, rather than the usual three years, would provide job security for machinists "and limit the amount of work outside vendors can perform in the workplace," the International Assn. of Machinists and Aerospace Workers said Monday.

It's an increasingly rare sight these days, but Northrop Grumman Corp. has been putting out help-wanted signs all over town. The huge defense contractor has flown sky banners with "Northrop Grumman is hiring" over Southland beaches and during a USC football game, has placed ads on company shuttle buses, and has even offered $100 plus a free dinner for potential hires to come check them out.