British Airways, Europe's biggest airline, says it plans to cut £300m from employee costs in 2004-06 as part of its drive to achieve a 10% operating margin.
'Clearly we cannot achieve that target without some further headcount reduction,' chief executive Rod Eddington said in a letter to staff, adding that the carrier would 'maintain our voluntary approach to redundancies'.
The cuts will be in addition to 13,000 job losses achieved by this March under a previous cost-saving programme.
Unions were also told that BA was urging pay restraint this year to help achieve the target savings.
BA did not say how many jobs will be lost as a result of the announcement, but it is expected to lead to cuts of between 3,000 and 4,000 posts, including managers and administration staff.
BA said its current number of flights would be maintained, but gave no details of its performance in recent months ahead of new financial figures being published next month.
