Spirit Airlines to furlough another 365 pilots in restructuring

By Doyinsola Oladipo NEW YORK (Reuters) -Spirit Airlines on Thursday said it will furlough 365 pilots and downgrade the status of up to 170 pilots in the first quarter of 2026 as it makes larger cuts to its workforce as part of its restructuring efforts. After filing for bankruptcy in August for the second time in a year, the ultra-low-cost airline told the union representing its pilots that it wants to cut $100 million in annual spending on pilots to conserve cash. "As part of our ongoing restructuring, we are taking additional steps to align staffing across our organization with our previously announced capacity reduction and smaller operating fleet size," the company said in a statement.  With voluntary attrition, the estimated furloughs are likely to decrease over the next several weeks, Spirit COO John Bendoraitis told employees in a memo seen by Reuters. The company will open the bid at the end of November.     Spirit said it currently has about 2,400 pilots. The airline previously furloughed about 330 pilots and plans to furlough another 270 in November. It has also decided to furlough approximately 1,800 flight attendants, about one-third of its cabin crew, effective December 1. The Florida-based airline said there will also be reductions across its corporate teams and it plans to make volume-based staffing adjustments across its maintenance stations. The carrier will close its maintenance stations and warehouse operations in Baltimore and Chicago effective January 1, 2026. Spirit said in a filing that the furloughs are expected to save the company $211 million. Spirit estimated it would incur losses of $804 million in 2025. It said its transformation plan to return to profitability in 2027 requires it to reduce its network in 2026.  (Reporting by Doyinsola Oladipo in New York and Rajesh Kumar Singh in Chicago; editing by Diane Craft, Deepa Babington and David Gregorio)

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