The world’s biggest civil helicopter maker, Eurocopter, has said falling orders mean it will have to cut costs.

The financial crisis has caused a sharp drop in spending on helicopters by companies and VIPs, mirroring a slump in business jet orders. Eurocopter said an exception was oil and gas companies which had continued to buy aircraft as energy prices rebound. In response to the order slump, the company, which is part of EADS, plans 200 million euros of one-off cost cuts by the end of 2011. It will reduce inventories to improve cashflow and retrain or redeploy some of its 16,000 staff, but there will be no compulsory redundancies. Eurocopter had sales of 4.4 billion euros last year, split equally between civil and military helicopters.More about: Military

Copyright © 2012 euronews