Republic, United airlines could lay off nearly 250 Pittsburgh-based employees because of pandemic

Nearly 250 employees of two of the airlines that serve Pittsburgh International Airport could be laid off Oct. 1 because of the coronavirus pandemic, according to filings with the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry.

They include 66 United Airlines employees and 183 employed by Republic Airways. Each airline filed the notices in July under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act.

“These adjustments reflect a worst-case scenario,” said Lauren Gaudion, a spokeswoman for Indianapolis-based Republic Airways.

The airline may lay off 2,500 employees throughout its system, including 183 in Pittsburgh and another 49 that work at Philadelphia International Airport.

“We’re operating at about 50% of our normally scheduled flights,” Gaudion said.

In Pittsburgh, that translates to about 15 departures a day that are scheduled in August compared to as many as 30 flights a day before the covid-19 pandemic started in March.

United didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment, but in July the Chicago-based airline said this year’s second quarter was the worst quarter in its 94-year history.

United’s net loss was $1.6 billion and operating revenues were down nearly 90% from 2019.

In addition to the 66 United employees in Pittsburgh, another 95 could be laid off in Philadelphia, according to the state filings. They could be joined by as many as 36,000 United workers across the country, nearly half of its workforce, according to The Associated Press.

Allegheny County Airport Authority spokesman Bob Kerlik deferred comment to the airlines.

Passenger volume at the airport has been increasing since April, when the pandemic halted most air travel.

June’s traffic was up 113% from May, but the number of people traveling remained down more than 78% compared to 2019 numbers, Kerlik told the Tribune-Review last week.

The numbers reflect a change in the airline industry that was starting to happen before the pandemic and has been hastened by the spread of the virus, according to Mike Boyd of Boyd Group International, a Colorado-based airline consulting firm.

“I think the real issue is our airline industry is going to be smaller,” Boyd said.

Boyd doesn’t expect business travel to return to pre-pandemic levels.

People already were traveling less for business because it wasn’t as necessary, but Boyd expected more people to be doing business remotely even after the pandemic ends, he said.

“That’s going to change a lot of things out there,” Boyd said.

Boyd predicts leisure travel will return to pre-pandemic levels, and that people who delayed vacations because of the pandemic will still take them eventually, he said.

The money people were going to spend on those vacation “is still in the bank” and will be spent, he said.

“Leisure travel is going to be very strong,” Boyd said.