U.S. aviation giant Boeing said Wednesday it's considering further job cuts and will reduce production due to depressed air travel brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The company made the remarks as it reported a $2.4 billion loss for the second quarter of 2020. Its commercial aircraft unit saw a 65% loss in revenue.

"We remained focused on the health of our employees and communities while proactively taking action to navigate the unprecedented commercial market impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic," Calhoun said in a statement.

Boeing said earlier this year it planned to reduce its workforce by 10%, or abut 16,000 employees.

"Regretfully, the prolonged impact of COVID-19 causing further reductions in our production rates and lower demand for commercial services means we'll have to further assess the size of our workforce," Calhoun added.

"The first wave of associates affected by [layoffs] received notification in May, and we continue to conduct smaller, phased workforce reductions to reach this target. Managers are communicating the latest wave of those reductions beginning today.

"The reality is the pandemic's impact on the aviation sector continues to be severe ... While there have been some encouraging signs, we estimate it will take around three years to return to 2019 passenger levels."

Boeing said in May its 737 program resumed early stages of production, and it plans to slowly increase production of the model to 31 per month by the beginning of 2022.

The company said this month customers had canceled dozens of 737 Max orders, bringing the total number of cancellations this year to 323.

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