Austrian Airlines plans to cut 500 jobs to reduce costs: source

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Austrian Airlines, owned by Germany's Lufthansa , plans to lay off around 500 staff as part of efforts to reduce annual costs by about 100 million euros ($112 million), a person familiar with the plan said on Monday.

The carrier has faced increasingly stiff competition from low-cost carriers including easyJet (NYSE: EZJ), Wizz Air and Ryanair's Laudamotion on short-haul routes out of its base, Vienna.

The plan to reduce costs is due to be officially announced on Thursday, when Lufthansa publishes its third-quarter results.

Austrian Airlines declined to comment.

Austrian media reported the cost-cutting plan last week. Austrian Airlines now has just over 7,000 employees, roughly 1,200 more than after the last round of job cuts in 2012.

(Reporting by Ilona Wissenbach; Additional reporting by Kirsti Knolle in Vienna; Writing by Francois Murphy; Editing by Edmund Blair)

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