Spanish airline Iberia to scale back routes in 2013

Spanish national airline Iberia has announced it is to cut a number of routes from its itinerary and alter several others in a bid to cut costs. In 2013, Iberia will cancel its routes from Madrid to cities such as Athens, Istanbul and Cairo as of January and will suspend direct flights to Santa Domingo in Dominican Republic and Havana in Cuba from April. Meanwhile, direct flights to San Juan in Puerto Rico and Montevideo in Uruguay have also been ended with passengers forced to take connecting flights from Miami. "The routes that we are leaving are those which have shown the greatest losses and we have no chance of making them profitable in the short term. When Iberia is competitive again, we will look into the possibility of re-opening them," said Iberia's Chief Executive Rafael Sanchez-Lozano. The news came after it was revealed that the airline would reduce its 20,000 workforce by 4,500 and ask those who retain their jobs to take pay cuts, which are up to 47 percent for its pilots. The unions at the airline have called six days of strikes over the company's new cost-cutting plans. The action has been confirmed to begin on Dec. 14. Iberia aircrew held 12 one-day strikes between December 2011 and March of this year in protest at the launch of the Iberia low-cost airline "Iberia Express," which they claimed was a way of bringing in poorer working conditions through the back door.