Comair to Cut 524 Jobs

Unless you do a lot of regional flying in the Midwest then the odds are good that you have not heard of Comair. For those of you who are not familiar with the company here is a look at how they have chosen to describe themselves, “Comair – a Delta Connection Carrier and wholly owned subsidiary of Delta Air Lines – is based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and operates 400 flights a day to approximately 70 cities throughout the United States and Canada. Comair was formed in 1977 and pioneered the regional jet era by introducing Bombardier CRJ regional jets to North America in 1993. With more than 30 years of service, our dedication and commitment to our customers and the communities we serve remains stronger than ever, thanks to our team of 2,500 dedicated aviation professionals.”

The company is getting ready to cut back on  524 people who work at their airport in Detroit, as the company is getting ready to cease operations at this location. These kinds of job cuts are more then enough to qualify as a mass layoff action under the current guidelines. For those of you who are not familiar with the idea of a mass layoff action here is a look at how the federal government defines the term, “The Mass Layoff Statistics (MLS) program collects reports on mass layoff actions that result in workers being separated from their jobs. Monthly mass layoff numbers are from establishments which have at least 50 initial claims for unemployment insurance (UI) filed against them during a 5-week period. Extended mass layoff numbers (issued quarterly) are from a subset of such establishments—where private sector nonfarm employers indicate that 50 or more workers were separated from their jobs for at least 31 days.” Under the terms of a mass layoff action the company must give several weeks of advance notice in order to give workers, and the community at large, time to prepare for the loss of income.

The Company News section of the Comair  site was empty and the company has yet to make comment on the job cuts. On their parent company’s site the latest news was about a conference presentation the company expects to give, “Delta Air Lines (NYSE: DAL) will present at the Deutsche Bank 2012 Aviation and Transportation Conference at 9:10 a.m. ET on Thursday, Sept. 6, 2012.”

Of course many airlines have been cutting back on jobs in order to make ends meet in the recent past. For those of you who missed out on our coverage of the most recent cuts by Qantas here is an excerpt that will get you up to speed in no time at all, “Take for example the case of Qantas, whose first round of major layoffs in the bad economy led to a serious amount of public rancor, after the executives compensation packages for the same period was made public. Sadly, the airline did not stop the layoffs there, and they are getting ready to do it all again. The company is, in a bid to reduce costs, making a deal with a major global airline. This deal, which is set to help reduce the operating expenses by several hundred million dollars a year, will also result in a cut of a significant number of jobs. In a move that is sure to be unpopular with the people the company is getting ready to drop 2,800 full time workers from its payrolls. This cut is much larger than any of previous layoff actions that the company has taken in the last couple of years. As you may recall, if you are a regular reader of our site, tat Quantas just laid off 500 workers back in May of this year.”