Alaska Airlines today announced cutbacks to both its flight schedule and its workforce beginning Nov. 9 to combat higher fuel costs and lowered travel demand.

The airline, headquartered in the City of SeaTac and the dominant carrier at Sea-Tac Airport, will eliminate 8 percent of its available seat-miles and 15 percent of its departures. Those reductions will trigger a workforce reduction of up to 1,000 people.

Alaska is the latest among U.S. network carriers to announce significant cutbacks to trim away unprofitable flying.

"The one-two punch of record oil prices and a softening economy on top of increased competition, has burdened Alaska Air Group with with a $50 million loss on an adjusted basis for the first half of the year," said Alaska chairman Bill Ayer. "We are changing our schedule to make sure we're flying the right routes with the right frequency and right aircraft," he said. "Regretably , a reduced schedule means we need fewer employees."

Those flight reductions will take several forms:

* Fewer flights at low-demand times such as holidays and weekends.

* Reducing flights in high frequency markets such as Seattle-California where Alaska already has multiple flights daily. Even with typical reductions of one flight per day in the Seattle-San Francisco and Seattle-Los Angeles markets, Alaska will still have more daily flights than at the same last year. Alaska bolstered its flight schedule earlier this year to compete with new rivals Virgin America and JetBlue.

* Downsizing aircraft it uses on Portland-Bay Area flights from Alaska 737s to Horizon Air CRJ-700 jets or Q400 turboprops. Horizon is Alaska's sister regional airline.

* Ending seasonal flying between San Francisco and three Mexican destinations, Cancun, Mazatlan and Ixtapa in Mexico. Alaska will continue serving those cities through Los Angeles.

* Halting flying between Portland and Orlando and Vancouver and San Francisco. That change was effective Aug. 24. Alaska will continue to serve Orlando twice daily from Seattle.

The company said it hopes to eliminate many of the jobs through attrition and by closing many open positions. It also plans to offer early-out packages and severance packages.

The union representing Alaska's 1,500 pilots warned that the airline could cut pilot ranks too far.

"We are concerned that, particularly as oil prices continue to plummet, Alaska Airlines will reduce its pilot ranks so severely that our management will create a situation in which our carrier will be unable to take advantage of its strong cash position and respond to opportunities to grow as other airlines cut routes and capacity," said Bill Shivers, chairman of the Alaska Airlines Master Executive Council of the Air Line Pilots Association.

The airline said it had hoped other economy and income-raising measures would have helped balance out higher fuel expenses, but those have proven insufficient.

The airline has raised fares on some routes multiple times this year. It has imposed a $25 fee on second checked bags and retired the last of its fuel-guzzling MD-80s jets.

The airline has realigned its frequent flier program to require more miles for free flights, and its has implemented new check-in procedures at Sea-Tac to reduce personnel requirements and speed up the check-in times.