Coronavirus strikes Bell helicopter workers in Fort Worth, Grand Prairie and Canada
Four workers at Fort Worth-based Bell, a defense and commercial aviation company that specializes in building helicopters and developing drone technology, have tested positive for coronavirus, officials said.
One employee has fully recovered and will return to work Tuesday, a company spokeswoman said. The other three workers are recovering at their respective homes.
Two of the workers were based at Bell’s Fort Worth plant, just south of Hurst, and a third employee was based in Grand Prairie. A fourth case involved a worker at Bell’s facility in Mirabel, Canada.
“We can confirm that three cases were contracted while the employees were out of the office, and they did not return to work afterward,” spokeswoman Lindsey Hughes said in an email. “The one case at our Grand Prairie facility, the employee had been out of the office for three weeks with another illness when they tested positive.”
Hughes added that Bell has “taken precautionary measures to inform other employees that were in close contact with these individuals prior to them being out of the office. We have also cleaned and sanitized their respective work areas.”
Bell, formerly known as Bell Helicopter, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of publicly-traded Textron Inc.
The company has recently begun work with DFW Airport and Ross Perot Jr.’s Hillwood on a proposed urban flying commuter vehicle known as the Bell Nexus.
Bell also is developing a V-280 Valor tilt-rotor aircraft that it hopes will replace the Army’s Blackhawk helicopter. The V-280 is being built in a partnership with Lockheed Martin.
Bell is considered an essential business and is operating on full schedules at all of its facilities, Hughes said.
“Bell has offered flexible working arrangements including working remote and staggered work schedules to employees who are able to do so,” she said.
The company was founded by Lawrence Dale Bell in 1935, as Bell Aircraft Corp. in Buffalo, N.Y. Bell moved the company to northeast Fort Worth in 1951.
L.D. Bell High School, in the Hurst-Euless-Bedford school district, is named after Bell.
This story was originally published April 13, 2020 at 4:12 PM with the headline "Coronavirus strikes Bell helicopter workers in Fort Worth, Grand Prairie and Canada."
