Airline Employee Numbers Rise
forbes.com
NEW YORK - For the fifth month in a row, U.S. passenger airlines posted gains in employees, according to a report on Tuesday from the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Overall, U.S. passenger airlines employed 2.3 percent more workers in June than they had a year earlier, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
Seventy-one percent of network airlines tracked by BTS increased their number of full-time employee equivalents. Delta Air Lines Inc. and US Airways Group Inc. led the pack with increases of 8.3 percent and 6 percent, respectively.
Full-time employee calculations count two part-time employees as one full-time employee.
Of low-cost airlines with available data, 71 percent increased the number of workers. AirTran Holdings Inc. and Frontier Airlines Holdings Inc. had the largest increases of the group, at 13.7 percent and 10.2 percent, respectively.
More than half of the regional airlines tracked by BTS posted increases as well, led by Republic Airways Holdings Inc., SkyWest Inc. and ExpressJet Holdings Inc., which posted gains of 82 percent, 23.2 percent and 17.7 percent.
The 413,500 full-time employees employed by the industry in June was the most in any month since September 2005. Network carriers employed 65 percent of the total, while low-cost carriers employed 17.7 percent and regional carriers employed 14.5 percent.
American Airlines, the flagship carrier of AMR Corp., employed the most among network carriers in June. Southwest Airlines (nyse: LUV - news - people ) employed the most among low-cost carriers and SkyWest led regional carriers.
The Amex Airline Index rose 1.18 points, or 2.7 percent, to 44.89 in afternoon trading.
