The company said it has been reducing capacity in line with falling demand and needed to reduce its workforce accordingly. About half of the redundancies will hit long-haul cabin crew, with technical, planning and management jobs also to be axed.
It said it had tried to minimize the cuts by offering reduced hours, not replacing some jobs and freezing executive pay.
“However these measure will not fully address the excess staff levels we now have as a result of these capacity reductions, especially in the long haul business where capacity is being reduced by 8 percent when compared with the last financial year,” Chief Executive Rob Fyfe said in a statement.
Savings from the staff cuts, combined with a company-wide review of spending, are expected to be more than NZ$20 million ($11 million) a year. Air New Zealand, which is 76 percent owned by the state, has 11,000 full-time staff.
In the trans-Tasman and Pacific markets, Air New Zealand said passenger numbers were down 10 percent and load factors fell 7 percentage points.
