BOMBARDIER has announced plans to cut another 7,500 jobs worldwide - with a major impact expected at its Belfast operations.
The Montreal-based aerospace firm said it plans a series of measures that will save $300 million by 2018.
It had already announced plans to cut 1,000 from its Belfast payroll earlier this year.
The firm said it would still strategically hire some workers to support a ramp up for key programmes including its C Series - the wings of which are made in Belfast.
A spokeswoman for Bombardier Belfast said it was too early to say what the impact would be on operations in Northern Ireland.
"Following the update today by Bombardier Inc on its five-year turnaround plan, we will be evaluating the impact on our Belfast operations and will communicate with our employees when that is completed," she said.
"We are not in a position to elaborate further at this time."
Company president and chief executive Alain Bellemare said: "After successfully de-risking our business last year, our focus has shifted to building a clear path to profitable earnings growth and cash generation. The actions announced today will ensure we have the right cost structure, workforce and organisation to compete and win in the future,.
“We are confident in our strategy, our leadership team and our ability to achieve both our 2016 goals and our 2020 turn-around plan objectives.”
He said the restructuring was "necessary to ensure Bombardier’s long-term competitiveness and position the company to continue to invest in its industry leading portfolio while also deleveraging its balance sheet.”
Last month, Bombardier admitted it only expects to deliver only seven of its new CSeries jets this year – and not 15 as it had earlier anticipated.
The company said the revised forecast was the result of delayed engine deliveries from its supplier, Pratt & Whitney.
The programme for the CSeries plane - which is designed as a rival to Airbus and Boeing - is already two-and-a-half years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget.
But Bombardier said it still expects to produce 90 to 120 of the CSeries aircraft a year by 2020.
The wings for the CSeries are made at the company's Belfast plant on Queen's Island.
Bombardier's C Series finally got off the ground in August as the first commercial flight of one of the new planes.
The CS100 fly from Zurich to Parish Charles de Gaulle came ahead of the delivery of the first CS300 aircraft to airBaltic in the autumn.
Bombardier said orders for both planes had picked up in the first half of 2016 with 127 new orders bringing to overall number to 370.
Bombardier had already announced plans in February to trim 7,000 workers over two years, including more than 1,000 in Belfast.
It said the layoffs were a continuation of the “workforce optimisation” plan being implemented across the company, and up to 2,000 of the cuts, mainly in Canada and Europe, will be contractors.
