Plane giant Airbus says further cost-cutting plans will not involve job losses at Filton.

Parent firm EADS, which has seen its profit margins hit by the soaring cast of fuel and the weakness of the dollar, said yesterday it is looking to save a further 650 million euros (£500m) in the Airbus operation.

But according to Airbus there are no plans to cut any jobs in Bristol or at other UK operations.

The company is already in the process of a cost-cutting initiative called Power8 which has seen thousands of job losses as part of a drive to save 2.1 billion euros.

The scheme has already cost 1,095 jobs at Filton, where Airbus employs around 6,000 people.

But union representatives were reassured no further redundancies were planned when they attended a meeting at the company's HQ in Toulouse.

There were also reports yesterday that the long expected sale of the Filton plant to British firm GKN is on the verge of completion after months of delays and negotiations. Airbus has been negotiating to sell Filton to GKN for a year, and the two sides have been close to a deal for several weeks.

Mark Thomas, the Filton- based official from the Amicus union said: "We have been reassured there will be no job cuts at Bristol, even though further savings are needed.

"The company said that the savings will come from moving more jobs abroad and extending the Power8 initiative for an extra two years."

Airbus has announced it is to build a new factory in Tunisia as part of a move to send more work to countries where costs are much lower than Europe.

EADS announced in the summer that it was asking all its divisions to shoulder the burden of combating a weak dollar.

Airbus has been forced to looks again at restructuring plans after the euro soared above the $1.35 budgeted for in the original Power8.

The company is particularly vulnerable to changes in the exchange rate because all sales of planes are in dollars, but only half its costs are in the US currency.

Chief executive Tom Enders said: "Power8 is the centre piece in Airbus' restructuring and integration efforts and we have been very successful so far.

"However, markets and competition remain challenging. Further measures to improve overall efficiency are necessary to secure long-term competitiveness."

Earlier this year the sale of five Airbus factories in France and Germany to outside suppliers collapsed as a result of the credit crisis.

Building a factory in Tunisia would be the first time Airbus has moved out of the euro zone. However, there are moves to start aircraft assembly in China from 2009.