CANADIAN AIRLINES International has reached a 38-month agreement with its 3,100 ticket agents, airport agents and crew schedulers to reduce costs by more than C$17 million ($13 million) a year.
The carrier's pilots, dispatchers and simulator technicians have all signed agreements, which are expected to save the airline an additional C$41 million annually.
The Calgary-based carrier must still negotiate agreements with the unions, which represent some 2,500 flight attendants. About 12,000 of the airline's 16,000 employees are unionised. Canadian Airlines, which lost C$26 million during the first nine months of 1995, is trying to cut costs by C$325 million a year.
Canadian has also announced that its six-year-old code-sharing agreement with Lufthansa will end by mutual agreement in June 1996, after which the carriers will operate independently as competing airlines. The airlines say that they decided to end the agreement because the Canada-Germany market is now mature enough to sustain both carriers.
Source: Flight International
