PARIS — The SAS Group announced an overhaul Tuesday, cutting about 40 percent of its work force and asking shareholders for more cash as it sought to ride out the global economic crisis.
The Scandinavian airline also posted a fourth-quarter net loss of 2.8 billion kronor, or $337 million, compared with a loss of 625 million kronor a year earlier. Revenue fell less than 1 percent, to 12.9 billion kronor.
SAS announced an overhaul under which it would ground 16 planes and retreat from unprofitable routes to focus on its core Scandinavian markets and on business travelers.
It is cutting about 3,000 jobs, which — combined with another 5,600 employees who are being let go through the divestment or outsourcing of operations — account for about 40 percent of its overall work force, Mats Loennqvist, the chief financial officer, said during a conference call.
SAS is eliminating about 75 routes, mainly to southern Europe, and continuing service on about 120 routes. It did not say whether service to Asia or North America would be affected.
SAS also said it would seek to raise about 6 billion kronor of new capital in a rights issue. The carrier has the support of its three government owners — Denmark, Sweden and Norway — as well as its largest private shareholder, the Wallenberg Foundations.
The three governments said they would participate in the offering to maintain their proportional stakes in the carrier, which total 50 percent. JPMorgan, Nordea and SEB are underwriting the rights issue.
SAS shares, which have lost about 43 percent of their value over the last 12 months, fell 17 percent in Stockholm on Tuesday.
Last year “will probably go down in history as one of the most challenging and turbulent years that the entire aviation industry has ever experienced,” Mats Jansson, the SAS chief executive, said in a statement.
Like other troubled second-tier European carriers, including Alitalia of Italy and Olympic Airways of Greece, SAS is trying to stay aloft in a shrinking market, and it has long been seen as a possible takeover candidate. Mr. Jansson said no concrete merger talks were under way.
The airline industry ended 2008 in a steep decline, as record fuel prices combined with economic calamity to check travel demand.
The International Air Transport Association reported that total international revenue passenger kilometers fell 4.6 percent in December compared with the same month a year earlier, and it forecast that passenger numbers would fall 3 percent in 2009.
The German carrier Lufthansa, citing the sharp decline in fuel costs toward the end of 2008, said Tuesday that it would manage a fourth-quarter operating profit of about 1.3 billion euros, or $1.68 billion.
Its two principal European rivals, Air France-KLM and British Airways, have both warned that they will post losses for the October to December period. A low-cost competitor, Ryanair, reported a loss Monday for the period, but said it expected to return to profit quickly.
During a conference call with analysts and journalists, Mr. Jansson said that he expected the SAS restructuring to succeed because “we have a track record of being relatively profitable in our core Nordic operations,” and he said that the company’s unions understood the need for tough measures.
“The plan looks sensible,” said Andrew David Lobbenberg, a transportation sector analyst at Royal Bank of Scotland in London. “The problem is in the application. They’ve come out with sensible plans before, but failed to execute.”
Mr. Loennqvist, the chief financial officer, said that there was reason for optimism in the fact that the recent results had been hurt by a number of nonrecurring items. The restructuring plan marks “a new base” from which to start, he said.
SAS last week sold 80 percent of its Spanair unit to a consortium of Catalonian investors for 1 euro, resulting in a fourth-quarter charge of 712 million kronor.
SAS is also selling its 47.2 percent holding in AirBaltic, a Latvian carrier, as well as its stakes in Spirit, Air Greenland, bmi, Estonian Airways, Skyways, Cubic and Trust.
