Flybe is to cut around 300 jobs from its UK operation in a bid to turn around the airline’s financial fortunes.
The cuts are set to come in the Flybe UK division and represent about 10 per cent of the current workforce in the UK including the Isle of Man and Channel Islands.
Flybe added that it would also look at possible further outsourcing of some functions – it has already outsourced its call centre from December 2012.
But the company’s management said it did not “currently envisage any significant change to the number of UK bases or its route network at this stage”.
Flybe said the cutbacks would result in savings of around £35 million by the 2014/15 financial year as the company looked to create “a new slimline business model for the division”.
The airline has blamed poor UK domestic demand as the major reason for slipping into the red in its last financial results published in November. Flybe made a pre-tax loss of £1.3 million for the six months to the end of September, compared to a profit of £14.3 million for the same period last year.
Despite the poor financial results in the UK, Flybe has continued to grow its share of the UK regional market outside London. The airline had 53.8 per cent of this market for the three months to the end of December – up by 3.3 percentage points on the same quarter in 2011.
Flybe UK carried 1.7 million passengers during the three months to December which was up by 3 per cent year-on-year while revenue grew by 2.5 per cent to £137.1 million.