Regional carrier Comair shed nearly 2,800 jobs over the past year as the company whittled down flights and operations and spun off its customer service unit.

That’s a 53 percent decline from June 2009 when the company had about 5,300 full-time equivalent jobs, according to the latest figures from the Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Service.

The drop represents the biggest decline in employment among all regional carriers tracked by the BTS in its monthly passenger airline employment data report. Since 2006, Comair’s employment is down 60 percent from a high of 6,210.

Comair is based at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, where its parent Delta Air Lines Inc. (NYSE: DAL) has been steadily cutting flights. Delta and its carriers now have about 170 daily flights departing from Cincinnati, down from about 250 in 2009.

A Comair spokeswoman said the carrier had about 3,300 employees at the Cincinnati airport last summer. That was before its customer services team was spun off to form Regional Elite Airline Services. Today, Comair employs about 1,800 locally.

On the flip side, Comair’s parent Delta reported a big jump in year-over-year employment. The Atlanta-based carrier reported 68 percent more employees, growing to 75,600 FTE workers from a staff of 45,600 in 2009. Those figures reflect the merger of Delta and Northwest Airlines.

Overall, U.S. passenger airlines employed 2.4 percent fewer workers in June 2010 than in June 2009, representing the 24th consecutive decrease in FTE levels for carriers from the same month of the previous year.



Read more: Comair employment down 53% from a year ago - Business Courier of Cincinnati