Employment at U.S. airlines rose 0.2 percent in December, the first time since June 2008 that passenger carriers created more jobs to keep pace with rising demand for travel.
Hiring by companies such as Delta Air Lines Inc. is starting to show up in data from the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics, which said last week that the industry workforce climbed to 379,651 from 378,953 a year earlier.
But while the industry has seen an overall increase in its workforce, cuts are continuing at regional carriers, which saw their employment dip 0.3 percent in from December 2009.
Employment at Erlanger-based Comair, a Delta subsidiary, was down 5.6 percent in December 2010 compared to the same month a year ago, with 2,448 workers.
From 2006 to 2010, employment at Comair dropped 60 percent - partly as its gate and ground employees were shifted to another Delta entity. Comair's drop in employment was the biggest in among regional carriers, which typically provide service from small cities, using primarily regional jets to support the network carriers' hub and spoke systems.
The overall industry's job-loss streak was the second-longest for U.S. airlines since the government began keeping track in 1990. Full- time employment at passenger carriers has fallen by about 143,000 since 2000, BTS data show, the equivalent of erasing the combined payrolls of Delta and American Airlines.
"They're beginning to add some heads in the customer service area, flight attendants and reservations," said William Swelbar, a research engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's air transportation center. "Everyone is looking in the mirror and saying 'I need to add here and there.' "
"Things are bottoming out," said Jerry Glass, a former labor executive at US Airways who is now president of Washington-based consulting firm F&H Solutions Group. "I would expect some moderate hiring in 2011."
AMR Corp.'s American said last week it is recalling 200 furloughed attendants, expanding on the 368 recalls announced Feb. 9, and US Airways Group Inc. took applications in December for 420 attendant jobs. Atlanta-based Delta has added more than 4,000 new employees over the past year.
Airline payrolls shrank for most of the last decade as the 2001 terrorist attacks and two recessions sapped travel demand and dragged carriers such as Delta into job-slashing bankruptcies. The industry learned to operate with fewer workers, with employment dropping 27 percent from the 2000 peak while traffic rose by about 15 percent.
Four of the five largest U.S. airlines posted profits last year as air travel recovered, with Fort Worth, Texas-based AMR alone in reporting a full-year loss. Passenger traffic climbed 3.5 percent in 2010 through October over a year earlier.
"As the economy starts to percolate again there's more demand," said John Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a Chicago-based outplacement consulting firm. "As that gathers momentum the hiring will pick up and has started to do that."
Carriers probably will be cautious in hiring because the shocks of 2008-09 are still fresh, Glass said. They cut about 22,000 jobs in those two years, government data show, and parked more than 500 planes as oil surged to a record and travel wilted.
United Continental Holdings Inc., the world's largest carrier, is among the airlines saying it plans to limit increases in available seating to roughly match the growth in U.S. gross domestic product. The Chicago-based carrier formed in the October merger of United and Continental airlines is eliminating 500 jobs in Continental's Houston headquarters.
"Airlines have learned from past mistakes," Glass said. "I don't think there's going to be an explosion of capacity growth which would lead to a lot of hiring."
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