A GLOBAL aerospace and defence firm says it remains committed to keeping services at a North-East airport despite seeing revenue fall.

Cobham, the world's largest commercial provider of civil and military flight inspection services, employs about 50 people at Durham Tees Valley Airport (DTVA).

The firm yesterday revealed its order intake had fallen from £2.4m to £1.6m, with revenue dropping from 1.8m to £1.7m.

However, its order book remained unchanged at £2.4bn, with pre-tax profits standing at £206m, and a spokesman confirmed to further job cuts were planned at DTVA.

Last month, the firm, which covers flight navigation aids for moving landing strips on military ships, announced six redundancies at DTVA as part of 76 job cuts across its Teesside and Bournemouth bases.

However, a spokesman said it had no plans to cut further jobs at DTVA, where staff work on a number of services including instrument landing systems, high-frequency direction finders, airfield ground lighting and tactical air navigation equipment.

Bob Murphy, Cobham chief executive, said: “We have delivered a good set of results in market conditions that continue to be challenging.

“The US defence and security market remains highly uncertain and we expect a period of declining, then flat, US Government budgets consistent with previous down cycles, but anticipate a return to modest growth from 2014.”