Monarch airlines is believed to be planning staff cuts of as many as 1,000 jobs.
If cuts this deep are made, it would affect about one-third of the airline’s workforce.
In order to reduce its operating costs, the carrier is involved in a major strategic review spearheaded by the airline’s chief executive Andrew Swaffield who took over in July this year.
Monarch in July confirmed an order worth £1.75bn for 30 new Boeing 737 planes to be delivered by 2020. Despite the order, Monarch is likely to trim the number of its aircraft from 42 to 30.
Monarch will try to compete with budget carriers Ryanair and easyJet, dropping long-haul flights and focussing instead only on short-haul ones within Europe.
"We're on a trajectory of changing from a charter airline to a scheduled European low-cost carrier. We need to operate as efficiently as a low-cost carrier," said Mr Swaffield.
He added he expected Monarch to be competing with easyJet and Ryanair within the next year to 18 months.
East Midlands Airport will be dropped from its ports of call next April. Currently it has 34 flights a week from the airport to nine destinations, mainly in and around the Mediterranean.
