HOUSTON – Continental Airlines Inc. will lay off 140 to 180 pilots after Labor Day, when the company begins reducing flights to cope with high fuel costs and a sluggish economy.

The furloughs are part of about 3,000 jobs cuts that Continental expects.

A union spokesman said Monday that the company had initially notified 500 pilots that they could be laid off, and the smaller number was "a dramatic improvement."

The company said in a bulletin to employees on Friday that most of the other reductions were made through voluntary buyouts, early retirements and job sharing, reducing the need for layoffs.

The pilot furloughs will start Sept. 9. If enough pilots take severance or early retirement offers, it could reduce the number of layoffs, the company said in the bulletin.

Houston-based Continental said that more than 2,500 jobs have already been eliminated. The company said employees in stations that were closed were laid off, but the rest of the reductions were achieved without layoffs.

The airline said it eliminated about 300 management and clerical jobs "through attrition and reduction-in-force."

The company said efforts to reduce pilot furloughs were successful but "not sufficient to eliminate the need to furlough between 140 and 180 pilots.

Mark Adams, a spokesman for the Air Line Pilots Association, said the company had sent layoff-warning notices to 500 of the carrier's 5,000 pilots. The union and company negotiated over retirement incentives and other measures to limit layoffs.

"We saved a lot of pilot jobs," Adams said. "Would we have liked to save every pilot's job? Yes."

Continental said in June that it would reduce U.S. capacity by 11 percent after the peak summer travel season ended.

Shares of Continental fell 37 cents, or 2.1 percent, to $17.04 in trading Monday.