FORT WORTH, Texas — American Airlines says it could cut 900 flight-attendant jobs as it reduces flights to cope with record-high fuel costs.
The airline expects to reduce jobs for pilots and mechanics too, but it hasn’t released numbers yet.
American, the nation’s largest carrier, said Wednesday that job cuts were necessary “to overcome near-term challenges and secure our company’s long-term future.”
American parent AMR Corp. said in a regulatory filing Wednesday it will take a charge of $70 million to cover severance costs for reducing its workforce of 82,000, including the flight-attendant jobs.
Further, AMR said, reduced flying and other cutbacks will lead the company to take a noncash accounting charge of about $1.1 billion to $1.2 billion for the just-concluded second quarter. That charge covers the reduced value of the company’s MD-80 and Embraer RJ-135 aircraft fleets.
Analysts were already expecting AMR to post a loss of about $330 million in the second quarter, according to a survey by Thomson Financial.
Those forecasts typically don’t include one-time charges.
In May, American announced it would cut domestic capacity 11 percent to 12 percent later this year, retire some planes and cut an unspecified number of jobs.
Federal law requires employers to give 60 days’ notice of major layoffs, and officials of the flight-attendants union said they received a notice Wednesday of job reductions that could start Aug. 31.
American has about 18,000 active flight attendants, so 900 jobs represents 5 percent of the ranks.
“We’ve all been sitting on the edge of our seats waiting for a number,” said Frank Bastien, a spokesman for the Association of Professional Flight Attendants. “Most of us were pretty pleased it wasn’t higher.”
