Delta to cut 7,000 jobs

Delta Air Lines said it would eliminate up to 7,000 jobs and US Airways said it would start charging passengers to make reservations by telephone or at an airport ticket counter.

The moves, by the second- and third-largest airlines at Logan International Airport, reflect their dire financial outlooks. US Airways could file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy court protection before week's end, according to its chairman. Delta is also flirting with a bankruptcy filing if it doesn't drastically slash costs, its chief executive said yesterday.

''Bankruptcy is still a possibility," Delta chief executive Gerald Grinstein said during a news conference on the job cuts and other restructuring.

While there will be sizable flight reductions in some parts of the country, the plan will bring three additional daily Delta flights to Logan beginning Jan. 31. But Delta officials said yesterday it's too early to tell whether any job cuts, which it will make over the next 18 months, will affect workers at Logan or other New England airports.

Airline specialists said the changes were painful but necessary for carriers like US Airways and Delta, which have higher operating costs than younger competitors like JetBlue. The changes are a part of a long-term transformation of the airlines that won't soon end, said Darryl Jenkins, a professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla.

''They're probably all going to survive long term. But at the same time, they have some serious work to do," Jenkins said. Airlines are likely to cut even more jobs, and engage in testy employee negotiations and probably some bankruptcy filings as they try to make themselves profitable, he said.

''The pain has not yet begun," he said.

Passengers are feeling the squeeze, too. US Airways said that starting today, it will add a $5 fee to tickets bought through its toll-free telephone system in the United States, and a $10 fee for tickets bought from domestic airport counter personnel. The fees won't apply to passengers who have US Airways' highest level of frequent-flier status, or to tickets bought at the counter or over the telephone overseas.

The carrier joins Continental Airlines, American Airlines, and Northwest Airlines in implementing similar fees since Sept. 1. Continental said last week it laid off 425 employees as part of a $200 million cost-cutting effort.

US Airways is trying to win $800 million in concessions from its unions, including $295 million from its pilots. On Monday, a group of hard-line pilots blocked their union from sending the cost-cutting proposal to the full union membership for a vote. US Airways chairman David Bronner has said publicly that not reaching new pacts with its unions would likely result in a bankruptcy filing.

So far, Delta hasn't joined the chorus of new ticketing fees, but its transformation plan includes many other changes. The airline said it has not decided where most of its job cuts will occur. It said yesterday it will cut about 2,000 at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, where it plans to eliminate a costly hub operation.

''De-hubbing" -- when airlines sharply reduce service at airports that used to serve as main connecting points for flights -- is a strategy Delta and other airlines are using to cut costs and help them defend more profitable operations.

Delta plans to cut its number of daily flights from Dallas to 21 from 265 by Jan. 31. It will serve only three cities nonstop from Dallas after the changes. Currently, it serves 69. The strategy hurts airports like Dallas and Pittsburgh, where US Airways dropped its hub earlier this year, but benefits Logan, where no one carrier dominates. ''Logan is one of the few places where airlines can make money," because despite a lot of competition, it has heavy business and leisure traffic year-round, Jenkins said.

Logan is one of five so-called focus cities where Delta plans to beef up service. The airline will add two new daily roundtrips to Washington, D.C. and one new daily flight to Raleigh/Durham, N.C., from Logan on Jan. 31.

Since 2001, Delta has already cut 16,000 jobs nationwide. The airline said yesterday it will cut administrative costs by 15 percent, including some undefined management cuts in the near future.

Keith Reed can be reached at reed@globe.com.