Spirit Airlines, citing COVID-19, will furlough nearly 2,500

Discount air carrier Spirit Airlines has told state officials around the U.S. that it intends to place nearly 2,500 employees on temporary furlough starting Oct. 1, after the company’s passenger traffic was severely cut by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In Florida, the furloughs will affect nearly 1,000 pilots, flight attendants and ground workers who are based at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and at the airline’s headquarters in Miramar.

Spirit had signaled the possibility in July of largescale furloughs after citing steep declines in leisure traffic — the backbone of its business — over the spring and summer. A total of 976 people in South Florida are affected by the decision, according to a filing with the state Department of Economic Opportunity.

Spirit, which employs close to 10,000 people in the U.S., Caribbean and Latin America, said 275 first officers, 571 flight attendants, 50 ramp services agents and 50 passenger service agents at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport will be temporarily furloughed between Oct. 1 and Oct. 14.

Some 30 dispatch workers at the airline’s operations center in Miramar will be sidelined.

“We see another setback in demand,” company CEO and president Ted Christie told analysts during a recent conference call. “We see the rest of the summer remaining challenging for us and the rest of the industry.”

In a statement Monday, Christie said he delivered the furlough message with a “heavy heart,” and the airline said the move “was one we hoped we would never have to make.”

Spirit said it would “continue to look for ways to reduce the number of furloughs as October approaches.” Christie said large numbers of employees had already taken voluntary leaves.

“Spirit’s cost structure and focus on leisure travel should allow us to recover quickly when demand for air travel increases,” the company said. “We look forward to bringing our team members back to work as soon as possible.”

The beginning of October has become a key time frame for airlines to start cutting staff amid one of the worst financial years the industry has experienced in decades. As a condition of receiving a collective billions in aid from the federal government, large airlines including Spirit agreed to refrain from laying off employees until the end of September.

In the interim, the airlines warned employees and the public they would likely become smaller toward the end of 2020 as the nation’s economy collapsed over the summer, passenger traffic nearly dried up and companies grounded thousands of planes. Although traffic rebounded somewhat after governments authorized the re-opening of local economies, the recovery has not come close to pre-pandemic levels.

In early July, United Airlines said it plans to cut back an estimated 500 people in Florida in October, mainly in Orlando and Tampa. Other carriers such as Delta Air Lines and American Airlines, which maintains a large hub at Miami International Airport, signaled they, too, would be cutting staff when allowed to do so.