One airline is doing its part to help create jobs in Atlanta.

Delta Air Lines has announced its plan to add up to 500 Atlanta jobs. Although the company has been cutting thousands of positions throughout the system through buyouts, the additional jobs are the result of a merger with Northwest Airlines.

According to an article by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the additional jobs include employees who are moving from Northwest’s headquarters in Minnesota, as well as new hires. The company plans to hire about 60 MBA employees with specialties in finance, economics, math and operations research who will work in pricing.

“We have a big recruiting effort underway,” Delta CEO Richard Anderson said. “We’re getting amazing resumes both locally and from around the United States.”

Delta is moving Northwest’s pricing operations to Atlanta, although some employees elected not to move or accepted buyouts. Delta also is expanding its own operations control center in Atlanta, with flight dispatchers and other staff members coming from Minneapolis.

“These are all people that are going to be down here buying houses,” Anderson added.

Delta currently has about 25,000 employees in Georgia, with most of them in Atlanta. The company said it will be hard to gage the effect on local employment as many employees are coming and going.

More than 2,500 employees are taking buyouts offered by Delta and will leave this summer. The deal with Northwest will result in a loss of jobs totaling 1,000 positions as the company combines administrative functions.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 1st, 2009 at 3:42 pm and is filed under jobs, Transportation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.