Fly with Us

Cuts, cuts, cuts. Airlines cutting routes, planes, and people seem to dominate the airline news. However this cut, has a little positive spin to it.
In 2008 US Airways had to let go over 1,300 positions, something no company enjoys. With declining revenues, US Airways had to make additional cuts, but didn’t want to resort to laying off additional people. Instead, the airline is asking flight attendants to volunteer to take 4 to 16 months off to allow the airline to save some cash.
The airline currently has over 6,600 flight attendants among their 33,000 employees.
I wasn’t able to find anywhere if the employees would be paid, so I contacted the kind folks over at US Airways. They stated that the leave is an “unpaid furlough”, but “flight attendants will be able to keep their flight privleges during the furlough.”
US Airways are not the only ones talking about future job cuts. Air France is looking at 3000 cuts, Delta 2000, American 1600, and on and on.
Part of me wonders how many of these cuts are needed and how many are these just an opprotunity to eliminate people at a time where it is becoming more and more accepted to lay off large numbers of hardworking people.