As part of efforts to cut costs by around EUR100 million euros (USD112 million) per year, Austrian Airlines (OS, Vienna) plans to lay off around 500 employees, a source close to the matter told Reuters on November 4.

The austerity programme is expected to be announced officially on November 7 when parent Lufthansa Group publishes its third-quarter results. Austrian declined to comment to Reuters about the plan.

Austrian Airlines has faced an increasingly crowded market on short-haul routes out of Vienna from LCCs such as easyJet, LaudaMotion, LEVEL, and Wizz Air. It currently employs a little more than 7,000 employees, which is 1,200 more than after the last round of job cuts in 2012, local media reported.

Austrian initially said it was working on an austerity programme in January, but it expected at the time that it would save EUR20 million to EUR30 million (USD23-33 million) per year. Apparently now the goal is to make it more severe.

It has already relocated crews based in Altenrhein, Graz, Innsbruck, Klagenfurt, Linz Blue Danube, and Salzburg to the capital and has said it will retire eighteen (now sixteen) wholly-owned Dash 8-400 turboprops by the end of 2021 while inducting six more A320-200s into its fleet by January 2020.

According to the ch-aviation fleets module, Austrian's narrowbody/regional fleet also entails seven A319-100s, twenty-eight A320-200s, six A321-100/-200s, and seventeen E195s. It also operates six widebody B767-300(ER)s and six B777-200(ER)s.

In addition, Austrian revealed in September that it would take over most of the flights of fellow Lufthansa Group member Eurowings (EW, Düsseldorf) and wet-lease four Airbus narrowbodies from it out of Vienna from January 1, 2020.