Bankrupt Delta Air Lines Inc. on Tuesday said it will cut up to 1,000 maintenance positions as part of an ongoing program to reign in costs.
At the same time, the troubled airline said it wants to launch a $14 million incentive plan to keep critical employees from leaving, which it said it needed to counter attrition at a key subsidiary, Delta Technology.
Delta spokeswoman Chris Kelly said the job cuts were part of the planned 7,000 to 9,000 reductions that the airline had said it would make through 2007.
The No. 3 U.S. carrier announced its plan for the cuts soon after it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in September, as part of its efforts to raise $3 billion through cost savings and revenue increases.
The company is also closing a small hangar in Atlanta, Delta North Technical Center, and moving the work done there to a larger nearby facility, she said.
While the airline is cutting jobs from many units, it also is trying to keep some employees in other critical operations.
Delta Technology, a subsidiary that provides technology and support services to the carrier, has seen attrition spike over the last year, the airline said in court documents filed on Monday.
It has seen attrition at the director level and above rise to about 20 percent in 2005 from less than 4 percent earlier, according to the documents.
The subsidiary has also seen a large number of engineers key to operations leave, Delta said.
High attrition rates are not unusual during bankruptcy. Northwest Airlines Corp., which filed for bankruptcy protection the same day as Delta did, has also seen an increase in the number of its employees, including managers, leaving since it filed.
Delta said the attrition was costing it money, and the plan’s cost, estimated at $13.54 million, would be less than the losses that would result from continued reductions in the subsidiary’s work force.
The carrier said the loss of Delta Technology employees led to a 10 percent increase in 2005 in the number of incidents involving severe technology problems compared with the previous year, and the average response time increased more than 25 percent.
“System problems often lead to flight delays, which cost Delta an estimated $38 per-minute per flight,” the airline said in the filing.
