Spirit Airlines to lay off one-third of flight attendants: report

Spirit Airlines is trying to cut expenses and will be laying off a third of its flight attendants to do so.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report the plan.

Chief Operating Officer John Bendoraitis told employees in a message on Monday that the company will be furloughing flight attendants.

It has about 5,200 flight attendants, with about 1,800 of them going to be laid off.

Hundreds were already on voluntary leave, but it wasn’t enough.

“We need to shift our focus to a complete rightsizing of the airline, which means volume-based adjustments to our Flight Attendant group, and across our teams,” Bendoraitis said in the employee memo, according to The Wall Street Journal. “This is hard news, and we understand it affects not only you and your peers but also your families.”

Employees can volunteer, which will then affect how many will be involuntarily cut.

Last week, the company said it wanted to cut about 25% of flights in November compared to last year, Reuters reported.

Spirit filed for bankruptcy for the second time in less than a year in August.

Last week, the unions representing both flight attendants and pilots had warned that the second bankruptcy was going to “be much more difficult than the last one.”

The unions’ warnings came after Spirit had said it needed to cut $100 million in annual spending on pilots and after it had already said it would furlough about 300 pilots by early November, Reuters reported.