Air New Zealand is to axe 200 fulltime jobs.
The national carrier says it is cutting 100 long-haul cabin crew positions and 68 technical, management and planning roles.
Other jobs to go are in the airline operations area and in some of Air New Zealand's subsidiaries, including Safe Air in Blenheim.
Air New Zealand chief executive Rob Fyfe says the job losses are necessary to match falls in the number of customers. The company is cutting total spending by more than $20 million.
Mr Fyfe told Checkpoint on Wednesday that visitor numbers have fallen significantly over the past year and the situation may get worse.
He says the company has 8% of its total flight capacity permanently grounded and there simply is not work for many of the staff to do.
Mr Fyfe says the airline had been trying to avoid the need for redundancies through cutting staff hours and not renewing temporary contracts, but greater savings are still required.
Staff will be consulted over the next month and the jobs will go early in the New Year, he says.
Limited opportunities, says union
An aviation union says the job cuts will hit affected technical staff hard, as there are limited opportunities elsewhere in the country.
The national secretary of the Aviation and Marine Engineers Association, George Ryde, says it will be hard for those who lose their jobs to find other work.
"Well, if you're an airline engineer in New Zealand there's really only one game in town - and that's called Air New Zealand. That's the problem.
"If you're in northern America or northern Europe there's plenty of options - but not in this neck of the woods, I'm afraid."
Mr Ryde says the union will work to minimise the impact, but it probably will not be able to stop the cuts from going ahead.
