Alaska Air Group could post a $700 million adjusted pretax loss in 2026 if current fuel conditions persist, and the Alaska Airlines layoffs are its first response. The company will cut about 200 management and back-office jobs. According to Skift, it announced the cuts on Friday, October 30.
If you fly Alaska or Hawaiian, the people on your plane aren’t the ones affected. A spokesperson told Skift that pilots, flight attendants, ramp agents and maintenance technicians are not affected. The 200 roles are non-contract jobs, meaning the office side of the airline.
How many jobs the Alaska Airlines layoffs cut
The 200 positions are less than 1% of Alaska’s roughly 32,500 employees, per Airways Magazine. Affected employees got 60-day WARN notices on Friday, finish work on November 13, and keep getting paid through December 31. Severance and other support are part of the package, according to Reuters as relayed by Airways.
Hawaii gets hit too. Forty-eight positions there are affected, according to West Hawaii Today. Hawaiian Airlines CEO Diana Birkett Rakow said 40 of those jobs are being eliminated and 8 employees are being offered other roles. She said the decision carried “great weight” because it affects colleagues who made meaningful contributions. Hawaiian has cut before, as our report on Hawaiian Airlines layoffs shows.
The fuel math behind the Alaska Air job cuts
CEO Ben Minicucci’s internal memo said the group could post that $700 million loss if current conditions persist. That “if” matters. Airways describes it as a conditional scenario, not a reported result, and the memo itself isn’t public. Reuters reviewed it, so the details we have come secondhand.
What we can say is how fuel is squeezing the books. Alaska’s fourth-quarter forecast assumed an economic fuel cost of $4.65 to $4.85 per gallon. Airways says that adds about $650 million to the fuel expense the airline originally planned for the quarter. Skift reports Alaska has already lost $416 million over the past nine months. Alaska isn’t alone, either: Southwest has also cut its profit forecast because of fuel.
Minicucci also pointed to a second problem that has nothing to do with oil. Overhead has been growing faster than revenue in recent years. Fuel made the pressure worse, but the cost structure was already heavy.
Here’s the thing: these Alaska Air Group layoffs are round six
This isn’t a one-off, and that’s what matters most for the people who work there. According to West Hawaii Today, it’s the sixth round of management layoffs since Alaska and Hawaiian merged in September 2024. About 479 WARN notices have gone to nonunion Hawaiian employees, and roughly 383 of those people had already left before this round.
Meanwhile, Alaska is still investing in growth. Skift notes the plan built on the Hawaiian deal includes new routes to Europe and Asia, more business class seats and a new premium economy cabin. So the airline is trimming office roles while betting on premium travel.
For travelers, the near-term effect is probably invisible: the planes still fly, and the crews still show up. The longer-term question is whether fuel prices keep climbing and what other costs get trimmed next. The next marker is Alaska’s fourth-quarter and full-year results, and we found no date for them yet. Until then, the $700 million number is a warning, not a result.
