MEXICO CITY (AP) -- About 100 Mexican pilots protested in front of the offices of the country's dominant airline company on Thursday, saying they feared massive job losses could follow a sale of the main national airlines.
Union representative Mauricio Lopez, wearing his pilot's cap and suit, said that officials of the holding company Cintra ''have not taken us into account'' in planning for the government's sell-off of its two-thirds stake in the company.
CINTRA plans to sell one of the country's two major airlines, AeroMexico, together with regional unit Aerolitoral. The airline Mexicana and assets of its unit Aerocaribe will be sold along with a new low-cost carrier.
Lopez said the pilots were concerned that the deal could result in ''a predatory war'' of cost-slashing and said the pilots wanted ''guarantees that we will have a source of work'' after the sale.
He argued that because the sale affects 80 percent of Mexico's domestic aviation business, the business is ''strategic for national security.''
A recent study by Roland Berger consultants on behalf of the pilots association showed Cintra has lost 8.2 percentage points of domestic market share and 7.2 percentage points of international market share since 2000, mostly to U.S. major carriers and domestic and foreign low-cost carriers.
The market has grown at an average annual rate of 2.2 percent in the past 10 years, but AeroMexico and Mexicana lost 3.4 million passengers while low-cost carriers such as Aviacsa, Aerocalifornia and Azteca have tripled their traffic, according to the study.
Cintra was set up in 1995 to manage the airlines it acquired, among assets related to the bank bailout of the mid-1990s.
