Jazz Air has proposed to chop about 5 percent of its staff in the near future. The announcement follows in response to cuts declared last month by Air Canada, its main customer in an effort to cope with surging fuel prices.

Notably, Jazz Air is the regional feeder carrier for Air Canada. The airline observed that the steps taken by the airline to roll back 270 jobs and 5 percent cut in capacity are unavoidable to match the available resources with its forcibly minimised expectations for revenues.

According to Jazz spokeswoman Manon Stuart, the staff cuts will affect all areas of the Halifax including pilots, customer service agents, flight attendants and maintenance and administrative staff, in addition to managers, said. Also, if Air Canada is forced to squeeze its service and work force more, then there could be deeper cuts could be expected.

On 17th June, Air Canada said that it was proposing to reduce its capacity to US destinations by 13 percent and between the cities of Canada to 2 percent once the winter and autumn schedule comes into effect. As per the plan, Air Canada is cutting about 2,000 jobs estimated to around 7 percent of its workforce. This move is in addition to the fuel surcharges on fares announced during the earlier part of this year. According to Stuart, the airline is yet to determine which routes are to be cut or frequency on which routes to be reduced since the plan is still on progress.