By DAVID KOENIG

| The Associated Press

Dallas • The parent of American Airlines wants to eliminate about 13,000 jobs — 15 percent of its workforce — as the nation’s third-biggest airline remakes itself under bankruptcy protection.

The company also proposes to end its traditional pension plans, a move strongly opposed by the airline’s unions and the U.S. pension-insurance agency, and to stop paying for retiree health benefits.

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AMR Corp. said Wednesday that it must cut labor costs by 20 percent. It will soon begin negotiations with its three major unions, but the president of the flight attendants’ union quickly rejected the company’s ideas as unacceptably harsh.

CEO Thomas Horton said Wednesday that the company hopes to return to profitability by cutting spending by more than $2 billion per year and raising revenue by $1 billion per year.

AMR, which has become a takevoer target, lost $884 million in the first nine months of 2011, and on Tuesday it disclosed a $904 million loss for December alone. It has lost more than $11 billion since 2001.

"We are going to use the restructuring process to make the necessary changes to meet our challenges head-on and capitalize fully on the solid foundation we’ve put in place," Horton said in a letter to employees.

AMR’s 88,000 employees have braced for bad news for weeks. AMR, American and short-haul affiliate American Eagle filed for bankruptcy protection in November. Horton said in December that the company would emerge from bankruptcy with fewer workers.

Laura Glading, president of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, said the proposal was more drastic than she expected. She claimed that the annual reduction in employee costs, which AMR put at $1.25 billion, would be closer to $2.8 billion.

"This is an absolute outrage," Glading said. "There’s nothing in here that’s remotely acceptable."

Transport Workers Association President James Little declared, "We’re going to fight this." His union represents American’s mechanics and bag handlers.

The biggest job cuts would come from the ranks of maintenance workers — about 4,600 — and baggage handlers, around 4,200, according to company spokesman Bruce Hicks. About 2,300 flight attendants, 1,400 management employees and 400 pilots would lose their jobs under the plan as well, he said.

If American and its three unions can’t agree on changes, the company could ask a bankruptcy judge in New York to throw out existing labor contracts and impose the company’s conditions on workers. Federal law requires the company to first make a good-faith effort to negotiate agreements with its workers.

Besides fewer workers and reduced benefits, company officials said that other cost-cutting moves would include restructuring debt and aircraft leases and grounding older planes. A maintenance-overhaul facility in Fort Worth, Texas, with 1,700 workers would be closed, and some maintenance and bag-handling work would be outsourced.

Ray Neidl, an analyst with Maxim Group LLC, said for American to win support for its plan, it would have to offer employees a goal — a carrot — and not just a stick. He said an AMR proposal for a new profit-sharing plan might help.

"It’s hard to see a carrot right now," he said, "but you have to convince them that this is part of a plan to return to profits and secure jobs."

The company also wants union approval to drop its traditional pension plans, which cover 130,000 employees and retirees. It would replace them with 401(k)-type plans under which the company contributes to workers’ retirement accounts.

The pension plans were once standard in the airline industry. AMR’s are underfunded by billions of dollars and the company said on a new website Wednesday that it could no longer afford them. This week, the U.S. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC) slapped liens on $91 million in AMR property after the company paid only $6.5 million of a required $100 million contribution to the plans.