Iberia (IB, Madrid Barajas) has announced that it has reached an agreement with its unions concerning the planned laying off of 1'427 pilots and ground staff. The International Airlines Group (IAG) member had originally angled for 1'581 redundancies.

"The agreement enables Iberia to continue with its transformation plan to introduce permanent structural changes across the airline and to facilitate profitable growth in the future," the airline said in a statement.

The exercise, which will be rolled out as soon as the agreement is ratified, is scheduled to run until December 2017 and will involve early retirements and voluntary redundancies along side a reduction in working hours.

Iberia’s cabin crew staff will not be affected by this process.