United States
The pandemic could push the American company, which employs 130,000 people, to lay off workers in October
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The American Airlines airline warned Wednesday that it could lay off up to 25,000 employees in October, thus inflating the wave of layoffs which should submerge in the fall a sector hard hit by the fall in air transport since the start of the pandemic.
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The company initially thought that traffic would have picked up on that date but “this unfortunately has not been the case,” write company CEO Doug Parker and operations manager Robert Isom in a letter to employees and consulted by AFP.
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Revenues from passenger flights, for example, fell 80% in June from the previous year. “And with rising infection rates and several states reimposing quarantine measures, demand for air travel is once again slowing down,” they add.
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Early departures
American Airlines, which has approximately 130,000 employees, had already announced in early July that it expects to have 20,000 more people than necessary to operate in the fall.
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As required by regulations, the company will begin to send notices to all employees potentially affected by layoffs, from pilots to maintenance personnel. But she hopes not to fire as many and encourages those who can to take advantage of early departure or extended leave programs.
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All American airlines have benefited from an envelope of 25 billion dollars (23.61 billion francs) paid by the government to help them to cope with the brutal plunge of the purchases of plane tickets since the beginning of the spread of Covid-19. They had agreed in return not to cut jobs until September 30.
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United and Southwest too
But many authorities still impose restrictions, and passengers are still reluctant to crowd in a confined space. Voluntary departure programs offered by all major airlines are not enough.
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United Airlines warned last week that it could lay off up to 36,000 workers. And the boss of Southwest Airlines warned his employees on Monday that it would be necessary to triple the number of its passengers by the end of the year to avoid layoffs.
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(AFP/NXP)
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