Lockheed Martin to exit San Antonio by mid-2018

Lockheed Martin, which moved out of this engine maintenance facility (pictured) at Port San Antonio earlier this year, will establish a cyber office in the port’s new Project Tech building Lockheed Martin, which moved out of this engine maintenance facility (pictured) at Port San Antonio earlier this year, will establish a cyber office in the port’s new Project Tech building Photo: JOHN DAVENPORT /San Antonio Express-News Photo: JOHN DAVENPORT /San Antonio Express-News Image 1 of / 20 Caption Close Lockheed Martin to exit San Antonio by mid-2018 1 / 20 Back to Gallery

Lockheed Martin is exiting the San Antonio market, deciding less than two months after it cut its workforce by more than half to close its Port San Antonio maintenance facility.

The facility will be shuttered by mid-2018. It currently has a contract servicing KC-10 air refueler engines that will be dispersed to other Lockheed facilities, but “it’s not enough to fill the capacity for what we’d be doing there,” said spokesman Ken Ross.

“We have had a declining business in San Antonio and no real growth opportunities that we saw on the horizon,” Ross said.

Ross said that the closure of the San Antonio Lockheed Martin Commercial Engines Solutions site — one of two such facilities — means that 4 percent of the KC-10 engine contract will be assumed by the remaining site, which is in Montreal.

Of the 44 remaining employees in San Antonio, 21 administrative employees will be offered positions at the company’s Fort Worth location, while the other 23 will continue to wrap up work through mid-2018. Layoff notices are expected to start being sent in January, and the company said it will offer support to laid-off employees.

Ross said StandardAero, which also does engine maintenance, repair and overhaul work for the Air Force, assumed the lease of the shared U-shaped building in June. At the time, StandardAero also hired 44 of Lockheed’s employees and took on the remainder of Lockheed’s work, which focused on jet engines for the F-16 fighter and U-2 spy plane. The facility sits north of Boeing Co.’s maintenance hangar.

“Clearly StandardAero, by assuming the entirety of the lease, is positioning itself to bring in new opportunities, underscored by the fact that they absorbed much of the Lockheed Martin workforce,” Paco Felici, the port’s spokesman, said.

Felici added that aerospace work has “occasional ebbs and flows” and that San Antonio is “focused and committed to seeing aerospace continue to succeed here as it has in the last 100 years.”

“Consolidations happen, and we stand ready to support all of our aerospace customers in pursuing new opportunities that they have,” Felici said.

Lockheed has been at Port San Antonio since 1999, when the former Kelly AFB was shut down.