American Airlines plans to slash 13,000 jobs -- around 15 percent of the company's total workforce -- and cut costs by 20 percent in order to stay afloat after filing for bankruptcy late last year.

"All workgroups will have total costs reduced by 20 percent, including management," Tom Horton, chief executive of American parent AMR Corporation, said in a letter to employees Wednesday.

"While the savings from each work group will be achieved somewhat differently, each will experience the same percentage reduction," he said.

Local television in the Dallas-Forth Worth, Texas area, home base of AMR, said the cuts include 1,400 management and support staff, 400 pilots, 2,300 flight attendants, 4,600 maintenance workers and 4,200 fleet service employees.

"These are painful decisions... But they are essential to American's future," Horton said in a statement later on Wednesday.

"We will emerge from our restructuring process as a leaner organization with fewer people, but we will also preserve tens of thousands of jobs that would have been lost if we had not embarked on this path," he said.

He said the airline needed to cut $1.25 billion a year in employee-related costs.

In exchange he offered employees a profit-sharing plan that would pay out 15 percent of all pre-tax income.

He made no references to cutting flights, but said the airline aimed to increase departures in five key US markets -- Dallas/Fort Worth, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles and New York -- by 20 percent over the next five years.

AMR, which operates American Airlines and American Eagle Airlines and employs nearly 88,500 employees worldwide, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on November 29.

The status allows the company to slash its debt burden and restructure operations, with more legal flexibility to renegotiate or cancel service and wage contracts.

AMR has a combined fleet of 900 aircraft serving more than 250 airports in over 50 countries.

AMR reported a huge net loss of $904 million in the month of December alone in a filing late Tuesday to the bankruptcy court handling its case.

The enormous December hole was more than the combined $884 million in losses AMR had between January and September of last year.