Airlines faces more job losses as major airlines down their planes cut off jobs. Emirates is planning to decommission 40% of the Airbus fleets and lay off almost a third of its crew and pilots. Similarly, Air Canada plans to over half of its employees, letting go of nearly 20,000 employees. The carriers believe that the reviews are necessary to weather the crisis and rebuild afterward.
Effective June 7, “approximately 50 to 60 percent” of the company’s 38,000 employees will be laid off,” CBC quotes an Air Canada memo on Friday. “We estimate about 20,000 people will be affected.”
The job cuts come as airlines make massive losses due to the Coronavirus. For instance, Tim Clark, President of Emirates, warns that the airlines will emerge 20-30% smaller after the Coronavirus.
Initiatives to curb the spread of the Coronavirus have adversely affected airlines globally. Government restrictions on travel as well as peoples’ skepticism to avoid travel have spelled doom for airlines globally. As a result, carriers like Air Canada are flying as little as 5% of the capacity they flew last year, hoping that they will achieve 25% as travel restrictions ease.
SEE ALSO: Airlines to Lose $253 Billion due to COVID-19
To cut losses arising from the pandemic, airlines had to take radical measures. Emirates Chief Executive Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum warns that the epidemic would have huge impacts on the financial performance, and therefore call for aggressive cost management initiatives.
In Emirates, the cost-cutting initiatives will involve letting go of 7,500 of the staff. The criteria for job cuts will depend on age, performance, and sickness. Mateusz Maszczynski reports that cabins members over the age of 60 will first face the cuts. Moreover, members with disciplinary issues, poor performance records, and high sicknesses might also lose their jobs.
Hope in the Distant Horizons for Airlines.
Emirates CEO believes that it could take up to 18 months to have a sense of normalcy. However, the airline is opening up limited services starting on May 21.
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