Delta Cuts Aircraft Type to Save Money : Airlines: The carrier expects to gain $100 million a year by eliminating 13 Airbus A-310s from its fleet.

Delta Air Lines Inc., seeking to cut costs in an increasingly competitive airline market, expects to save $100 million a year by removing its 13 Airbus A-310 aircraft from its fleet.

“That’s about $100 million a year savings right there, eliminating one airplane type, the inventory that goes with that, the training and so forth,” Chief Executive Ronald Allen said in an interview Wednesday.

Delta, the nation’s third-largest airline, said Tuesday that it would remove the planes as part of its program to return to sustained profitability.

The company also said Tuesday that its profit improvement plan, aimed at reducing costs by $700 million over three years, is a year ahead of schedule.

In addition, it said it will eliminate 2,500 jobs over the next 12 months as it reshapes its technical operations division.

As a means of cutting expenses, Delta is examining all its aircraft and may further simplify its fleet over the next couple of years, Allen said.

The airline has 13 different types of aircraft in its fleet, excluding the Airbus A-310 planes.

“We will probably still have too many types of planes--not too many planes, but too many types--so we must address that,” he said, adding that Delta will probably begin to replace its Lockheed L10-11 aircraft in the next few years.

The fleet simplification plan is part of Delta’s goal to slash annual operating costs by approximately $2 billion by June, 1997, in order to compete with lower-cost carriers.

Delta recently reported a loss for the fiscal third quarter ended April 29 of $77.9 million, or $2.10 a share, on revenue of $2.94 billion. This loss was narrowed from the year-earlier quarter, when it had a loss of $152.3 million, or $3.61 a share, on revenue of $2.93 billion.

Allen also said Delta expects to revamp its short-haul operations.

“I think there will be some changes in the way we serve the short-haul. . . . We may wind up with what appears to be a separate kind of branded product in the short-haul market,” he said.

Delta said in April that it would not form a separate short-haul unit and instead would cut costs throughout the airline.

However, Delta is closely examining short-haul operations and wants to increase plane utilization and may also revamp service on those flights, Allen said.