Hawker Beechcraft hourly workers picket at one of the company’s entrance gates Aug. 4 in Wichita. The strike began after the labor contract expired. The state’s key aviation industry was rocked this year by massive layoffs following a series of strikes at Hawker Beechcraft Corp. and The Boeing Co.

Kansas City, Mo. ? The state’s key aviation industry was rocked by massive layoffs following a series of strikes at Hawker Beechcraft Corp. and The Boeing Co.

In Overland Park, Sprint Nextel Corp. continued to hemorrhage customers while Embarq Corp., one of the state’s three Fortune 500 firms, announced its sale to a smaller competitor based in Louisiana.

Across the state, meanwhile, farmers rejoiced to surging commodity prices that allowed them to go on spending sprees — at least, until the failing economy caused those prices to crash.

The national news was full of tales of home foreclosures, consumer spending declines and business failures. But Kansas had its own spate of sometimes depressing headlines in 2008.

Turbulence in the aviation industry first surfaced earlier this year when the Pentagon awarded a $35 billion U.S. Air Force tanker contract to a combination of U.S.-based Northrop Grumman Corp. and European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co.

Boeing, which was beat on the contract and had planned to perform some of the manufacturing in Wichita, protested and a subsequent Government Accountability Office review found major flaws with the way it was awarded. The Pentagon reopened the bidding in August but decided to hold off on awarding the contract until next year.

On Aug. 2, about 5,200 machinists at Hawker Beechcraft plants in Wichita and Salina walked off the job. Workers were idled for most of the month before accepting a new three-year labor contract and ending the strike on Aug. 28.

Days later, 750 workers at Boeing’s defense plant in Wichita joined 26,000 other production workers at the company’s plants in Oregon and Washington in rejecting their contract offer and going on strike. The work stoppage lasted eight weeks, ending on Nov. 3 when the machinists accepted a new contract.

The strike caused collateral damage as Spirit Aerosystems — a major Boeing supplier of aircraft parts — was forced to put most of its 10,500 employees in Wichita on a reduced three-day work week.

Throughout November, Hawker Beechcraft, Boeing and Cessna Aircraft Co. announced they were laying off a combined 1,800 employees in Wichita, blaming declining sales and delay of major governmental programs — including the Air Force tanker project.

For Sprint, 2008 was another year of retreat as it lost millions of wireless subscribers angry over call quality or customer service issues or seduced by competitors’ gizmos, such as AT&T’s iPhone.

CEO Dan Hesse promised investors that the nation’s No. 3 mobile carrier was making great strides in fixing many of the problems created following its acquisition of Nextel Communication Inc. in 1995. But he also told analysts in August, “We’ve not turned the corner yet and I’ve been clear that this will take some time.”

Monroe, La.-based CenturyTel Inc. announced in October that it was buying Embarq, Sprint’s former local telephone company, for stock initially valued at $5.8 billion.

The deal raised eyebrows as Embarq is much larger than CenturyTel but analysts said it showed the uncertainty among “wired” telephone companies that are losing customers to wireless and Internet telephone services.