USAir, Hit by Huge Losses, to Lay Off 3,585, Cut Flights
USAir, hit by huge losses last year, said Monday that it will lay off 3,585 employees in the next few months, closing flight crew bases in San Diego and three other cities and eliminating an aircraft maintenance facility in Los Angeles.
The company declined comment on where the jobs would be cut. But sources familiar with the company’s operations said that as many as 350 USAir employees would lose their jobs at Orange County John Wayne Airport on May 2 when USAir pulls out of that market.
The USAir austerity program includes the elimination of a San Diego flight crew base that is home to 120 pilots and 274 flight attendants. Most of those employees were with Pacific Southwest Airlines when USAir acquired San Diego-based PSA in 1986.
The airline will not know how many of its 6,000 California employees will lose jobs for several months, spokesman Larry Pickett said Monday. Many San Diego-based employees, for example, are expected to move elsewhere in the company in order to keep their jobs.
USAir, which is based in Arlington, Va., recently reported a 1990 loss of $454 million on $6.6 billion in revenue. It hopes to cut costs by eliminating unprofitable routes, closing facilities and furloughing about 8% of its 49,000 employees.
The airline previously announced that it is reducing daily departures from California airports by 97 to 192 on May 2. The cuts include all service from Orange County. The carrier has 22 daily flights from Orange County to the Bay Area, Sacramento and Phoenix. Nationwide, the total number of USAir’s daily departures on May 2 will be reduced to 2,626 from 2,894.
In line with the flight cuts on May 2, USAir will furlough 660 pilots, 540 flight attendants, 505 maintenance and utility employees, 1,300 customer service agents, 305 reservations agents and 275 managers and staff members. The layoffs are in addition to 3,600 furloughs that occurred last August.
The cuts at John Wayne Airport will be for ground crews, ticket agents, baggage handlers and others. There are no pilots or flight attendants based in Orange County.
The service cuts and furloughs represent a dramatic retrenchment for USAir, which has been hit hard by bruising West Coast fare wars and high fuel costs since it acquired PSA and Piedmont airlines during the late 1980s.
USAir President Seth E. Schofield, in a prepared release, linked the cuts to the continuing recession, slumping air traffic and “sharply higher operating costs, particularly in the price of jet fuel.”
The furloughs announced Monday will hit hardest in the four cities where USAir will close flight-crew bases: San Diego, Miami, Greensboro, N.C., and Syracuse, N.Y. Eight bases will remain open.
“It comes as a shock to everyone,” said Carol Austin, president of the USAir branch of the Assn. of Flight Attendants, which represents about 9,400 USAir employees. “It will be devastating to the 274 flight attendants and their families” in San Diego, said Austin, a San Diego resident and a former PSA flight attendant.
The furloughs will create a “domino effect” as senior airline employees in San Diego seek transfers to Los Angeles and San Francisco. Similar transfers will occur as USAir closes flight bases in Miami, Greensboro and Syracuse, Austin said.
Some of USAir’s 675 Los Angeles-based flight attendants will be forced to seek transfers as they are “bumped” by senior personnel from San Diego, said Dave Alexander, a former PSA flight attendant who now is president of the flight attendants’ Los Angeles-based local. Similarly, the furloughs could force USAir employees in San Francisco to seek transfers back East.
In addition to eliminating the four flight crew bases, USAir will close a maintenance facility in Utica, N.Y., and a reservations office in Reston, Va. It also will transfer a Los Angeles-based Boeing 737 inspection operation to a hangar at Lindbergh Field in San Diego.
USAir now uses the hangar to service its fleet of British Aerospace 146 airliners. USAir is grounding the British-built airliners as part of its restructuring, but Pickett was unable to say how many jobs would be lost or gained at the hangar after the switch.
USAir employees, who learned of the furlough plans early on Monday, are already describing the day as Black Monday, said USAir Capt. John Feldvary, a spokesman for the Air Line Pilots Assn., which represents 6,200 USAir pilots.
“It looks as if we’ll be going down to about 5,600 pilots,” said Feldvary, a relatively new pilot with USAir and one who will probably return to a co-pilot’s seat.
Senior USAir pilots furloughed in California “would most likely have to head east, maybe to Pittsburgh, Boston or Charlotte,” Feldvary said.
Feldvary said such furloughs are likely to happen industrywide as other airlines try to cope with higher costs and falling passenger totals. “We’re not alone, unfortunately,” Feldvary said. “USAir usually announces first on these things, and the other airlines slowly come out with some kind of layoffs.”
USAir had earlier indicated that about 500 jobs would be cut in California because of the company’s retrenchment in the state.
