Faced with the very real possibility that their desired merger with Northwest will fall through due to the inability of the pilot’s unions to negotiate an integration of their seniority lists, Delta is now looking for additional options to handle the expected decline in domestic travel in the coming months. One of those options is an effort to buy out ~2,000 of their front-line employees, meaning customer-facing positions. They’re doing so by offering a package to 30,000 of those employees, more than half of the total workforce at the company. No details in the articles on what the buy out package is, but they’re willing to accept more than the 2,000 if they get them, so they’re pretty willing to move forward on this front it would seem. Delta is also cutting 5% of its flights within the US, including cancelling all service from some airports, including Atlantic City, Islip and Bellingham, WA.
These are not the signs you want to see from a major company that just emerged from bankruptcy reorganization. Then again, with the single largest cost component of their supply chain 40% higher than they expected it to be, the numbers cannot be good.
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