U.S. airlines lost one in every four jobs in past decade

--

May 30--Southwest Airlines Co. chairman and chief executive Gary Kelly recently referred to the previous 10 years as "the lost decade."

For many airline employees, it could better be called "the lost-job decade."

According to numbers released last week by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, U.S. passenger airlines lost one in every four jobs between 2000 and 2010, dropping from 523,208 jobs at the end of 2000 to 390,053 at the end of last year.

For the major carriers that operate hub-and-spoke networks, the drop has been even more drastic, with more than one in every three jobs gone. The BTS said the six network carriers employed 265,822 people at year's end, down 37 percent from the 425,233 employees at those carriers 10 years earlier.

"When you lose $40 billion, you lose 150,000 employees," aviation consultant William Swelbar said. "This is an industry that is right-sizing itself, that arguably grew too big."

Many airlines have cut their capacity in seat miles flown, but their workforce has been reduced even more, he said. That makes the case that the airline industry was unproductive, he said.

"We're just making the necessary corrections," said Swelbar, a research engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's International Center for Air Transportation.

U.S. airlines suffered a series of blows during the decade, including a downturn and recession that followed Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, multiple bankruptcies, soaring fuel prices and, at decade's end, another deep recession.

Some findings from the BTS numbers:

While network carriers cut their ranks significantly, regional airlines grew rapidly.

Regional airlines like SkyWest Inc. and Pinnacle Airlines Inc. saw their employment more than double, from 23,223 in 2000 to 54,070. By contrast, low-cost carriers like Southwest and JetBlue Airways Corp. had job growth of 7 percent, from 60,207 to 64,544 over the decade.

"The transference of flights and climate from network carriers to low-cost or regionals is not direct," Northeastern University finance professor Harlan Platt said "By that, I mean the job loss at network carriers is far greater than the job gain at the other two."

Among job classifications, the number of pilots industrywide declined 3 percent. However, loss of pilot jobs at network carriers was much more drastic.

American Airlines Inc., Delta Air Lines Inc., Continental Airlines Inc., United Airlines Inc. and US Airways Inc. all saw sharp declines in pilots, ranging from a 24 percent drop at American to a fall of 46 percent at United.

Among the network carriers, only the smallest -- Alaska Airlines Inc. -- saw a minor drop, down 2 percent.

By contrast, low-cost carriers employed 37 percent more pilots in 2010 than in 2000, and regional carriers were up 235 percent.

Overall, the number of pilots declined from 66,119 in 2000 to 63,874 in 2010, the BTS said.

Maintenance jobs showed a startling fall, down 33 percent over that period. Leading the decline was United, with 72 percent fewer jobs -- from 14,802 in 2000 to 4,172 in 2010.

Distorting the picture for many carriers, and understating the number of job losses at those carriers, are a series of mergers that have reduced the number of airlines since 2000.

The workforce at United, for example, fell from 86,013 in 2000 to 46,289 in 2010, down nearly 40,000 jobs. But if one includes 2010 merger partner Continental, the decline increases from 128,481 to 84,049, or more than 44,000.

American and Trans World Airlines Inc. combined had 112,320 jobs in 2000, the BTS reported. In 2001, American bought TWA, shortly before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. American in 2010 had 65,506 jobs, a decline of nearly 47,000 jobs from the American-TWA total of 2000.

Delta showed an 8 percent increase in employees during the decade. However, Delta merged with Northwest Airlines Inc. in 2008. Including Northwest's jobs in the 2000 totals, Delta had a decline from 122,935 to 76,742, or more than 46,000 jobs.

JetBlue, which began flying in 2000, showed the biggest gain among major carriers, growing from 693 in 2000 to 11,211 at the end of 2010.

Next was Southwest, with an increase of 6,418 employees. With AirTran Airways Inc., which Southwest bought on May 2, the combined total is up 10,612 over the decade, from 32,706 to 43,318.