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Aer Lingus is considering cutting up to 500 jobs as part of a big shake-up of the organisation.
The Irish flag carrier blamed escalating costs and a challenging economic landscape for the decision, highlighting surging oil prices, largely attributed to the US-Iran war, as a key factor impacting the sector.
The proposed measures follow an earlier reduction of senior management roles by a quarter.
Aer Lingus now plans to decrease wider employee costs by a similar proportion, alongside alongside eliminating less profitable routes from its network.
Aer Lingus told the Irish Times that 70 pilots and 140 cabin crew could be axed, as well as 290 jobs in the company’s head office at Dublin Airport.
The flights on the chopping block are all out of Dublin and include destinations such as Denver, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, and Split in Croatia.
The strategy is expected to reduce overall flying capacity by 6 per cent, affecting both long-haul and short-haul services.
It comes after Aer Lingus’s parent company, London-listed IAG, issued a profit warning in May.
IAG said that high jet fuel costs and supply chain disruptions, exacerbated by the Iran conflict, would weigh more heavily on earnings than initially anticipated.
The company said at the time that it expected to spend about €2 billion (£1.72 billion) more than planned on fuel this year.
IAG chief executive Luis Gallego said the company was “managing the uncertainty” caused by the fuel price increase by “taking the necessary action on yields, costs and capacity”.
He said that all airlines “need to increase fares in order to mitigate the impact” of the increase in the price of fuel, which represents about a quarter of their costs.
He added: “Whilst the impact of the higher fuel price will inevitably lead to lower profit this year than we originally anticipated, we are confident in our business model and strategy.”
Aer Lingus chief executive Lynne Embleton said in a recent announcement: "Our accelerated transformation aims to ... ensure the airline is a strong investment case and able to weather the turbulence in our industry."
The airline operates more than 100 routes connecting Europe and North America.
It is targeting an operating margin of 12-15 per cent in the medium term to attract further investment.
This compares to its 2025 operating margin of 11.1 per cent, which lags behind the more than 15 per cent achieved by fellow IAG-owned carriers British Airways and Iberia.