Paris, June 25 (IANS) Air France will lay off its 4,391 employees by March 2013, French business daily La Tribune reported Thursday.

Based on a work committee report of the company, jobs would be reduced in three phases – 2,436 jobs will be cut in 2010-2011, 834 in 2011-2012 and 1,121 staff will be laid off in 2012-2013, Xinhua reported citing the daily.

The cut will reduce the workforce of the airliner by 16.3 percent as compared the number of employees in March 2008 before the global economic crisis.

The company also plans to shed off 9,321 jobs over the next five years by freezing fresh recruitment and non-replacement of retiring staff, the report said.

The Air France-KLM joint venture suffered a net loss of 1.56 billion euros ($1.92 billion) during the year 2009- 2010, after a loss of 811 million euros ($1.002 billion) in 2008-09.