AirTran Airways to lay off 169 pilots

In an effort to trim its workforce and cuts costs, AirTran Airways, headquartered in Orlando, Florida, the United States, has decided to lay off 169 pilots with effect from September 3, 2008.
The pilots to be furloughed have worked less than a year for AirTran Airways and are still on probation, the airline said in a statement, adding that they would have rights to be called back to work.

Most of the job cuts will be in Atlanta because all of AirTran’s 1,450 pilots are based there.

The low-cost airline AirTran Airways, a subsidiary of AirTran Holdings, operates over 750 daily flights throughout the eastern United States the Midwest, including over 270 daily departures from Atlanta. The carrier’s main hub is at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, with a secondary hub at Orlando International Airport.

AirTran Airways, which employs about 8,900 people, is reducing its workforce as it plans to decrease its flight schedule by 7%-8% during the last four months of 2008.

AirTran, which is the number 10 carrier in terms of traffic in the United States, has a young, fuel-efficient fleet, but it has a huge debt, too – amounting to $2.8 billion.

The carrier had announced in July 2008 that it would need to cast off about 300 flight attendants and 180 pilots in order to cut annual costs by about $16 million.

Though the company received sufficient requests for leaves to avoid furloughing flight attendants, only five pilots decided to take leaves. Reductions in the number of flight attendants involve 6-month and 12-month leaves or the ‘early-exit’ programmes the company created, the AirTran statement said.

A spokesman for AirTran Airways was quoted by the US media as saying: “The company is very lean, and we have not been backfilling when people leave in certain areas. We are continuing to do everything in our power to keep our costs as low as possible.”

Even as AirTran Airways tries to cut costs to cope with the enormous rise in the prices of aviation fuel, the statement added, the company has been trying to negotiate with employees to cut their pay by 5% to 15%, but mechanics and flight dispatchers already have voted against the cuts.

The company intends to cut employees’ pay to save $15 million: salaries of senior corporate officers are planned to be reduced by 15% and those of mid-level employees, by 5% to 11%.

About half of the workforce of AirTran Airways is represented by unions.