More than 300 people will be made redundant as part of a first wave of restructuring at TAROM (RO, Bucharest Henri Coanda), Romania's transport minister Răzvan Cuc revealed at a press conference on August 26. They are employed in the flag carrier's non-core commercial, procurement, and economic departments, local media reported.

Tarom’s Board of Directors had endorsed the downsizing, according to Cuc. The job losses, which were announced together with a number of redundancies among managers at the national road administrator CNAIR, were only the beginning, the minister added. The next step would be to evaluate how many of the core and technical staff could be let go.

“Of the approximately 470 technical staff, some do not work to their full potential,” Cuc said.

A separate profit centre could be created, the minister suggested, which may conclude for example that the airline's technical wing could finance itself also through external contracts with other companies.

In April, Tarom was forced to deny that the Romanian government planned to merge the carrier with privately-owned rival Blue Air (Romania), after local aviation website BoardingPassRO had reported that the government aimed to acquire a stake in Blue Air and then merge it with Tarom.