United Airlines to Furlough Flight Attendants

United Airlines (NYSE: UAL) today announced that because of its decreased flight schedule for next year, the airline will need to reduce its flight attendant employment levels by an additional 2,700 beginning Jan. 31, 2003. This will bring the total number of flight attendants on furlough to approximately 4,800.

“United sincerely regrets the necessity of making this decision because of the impact it will have on our employees, their families and their communities,” said Larry De Shon, United’s senior vice president-Onboard Service. “As part of our recovery plan, United has previously announced it will reduce capacity and that unfortunately means we will need fewer flight attendants.”

“Our goal is to be as helpful as we can be during this extremely difficult process for everyone,” he said, “and under terms of its contract with the Association of Flight Attendants, United will first offer voluntary furlough options to offset imposing involuntary furloughs.”

In addition, United’s Human Resource Division will support all flight attendants to assist them with career transitions. United currently has about 23,800 flight attendants around the world. At this time it is not known which domiciles will be affected by this announcement.

United late last month announced cost savings measures that will result in the furlough of roughly 1,500 maintenance, customer service and reservations employees.