Air France has announced it is cutting its workforce by 2,500 over the next two years in response to slackening demand.

The carrier, which has a workforce of 70,000, said it aimed to make the cuts through natural attrition rather than redundancies.

The announcement follows the group’s stark outlook last month when it disclosed that it has dropped into the red for the current financial year, and warned of an operating loss of around €200m, compared to a forecast last May for an operating profit of around €1bn.

The group said passenger traffic fell 9.4 percent in March, as resilient sales of economy tickets failed to offset a decline in premium fares. The latest round of cuts comes in addition to 1,000 to 1,200 losses announced in February. Last year it cut its workforce by 2,000.

Air France KLM also said last month that it planned to cut capacity on all of its networks, in response to falling demand.

The news comes a day after Qantas announced its third round of job cuts in a year. The Australian flag carrier said it was axing 1,750 jobs and slicing an additional AU$300m from its profit forecast as the global financial crisis continues to seriously erode margins.
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