The president of Emirates Airlines said the company plans to cut up to 9,000 jobs due to the Corona epidemic.
It is the first time that the world’s largest long-haul airline has disclosed the number of jobs that will be lost.
Before the crisis, Emirates had 60,000 employees.
Tim Clark said the company had already laid off a tenth of its employees, but said: “Maybe we’ll have to give away a few more, maybe by as much as 15 percent.”
The global aviation industry has been severely affected by the spread of the virus, as activity has almost completely ceased.
In an interview with the BBC, Tim said Emirates is “not in bad shape like the others.”
But its current position is an indication of a significant shift in the fortune of the airline, which it said before the outbreak of the epidemic that it was heading towards “our best years ever.”
The job cuts that are sweeping the aviation industry are worrying Emirates employees that things may go wrong.
The BBC learned that there is growing frustration about what they see as poor communication and transparency on the part of the company.
At least 700 of the airline’s 4,500 pilots have received notifications about their services during the past week, which means that at least 1,200 pilots have been informed, since the start of the Corona virus crisis, that their jobs will be laid off.
The abolition of pilot jobs has focused on Airbus pilots, not Boeing aircraft.
Image source
Reuters
Emirates uses the Airbus A380 giant aircraft that can accommodate about 500 passengers. As for the company’s Boeing 777s, it accommodates fewer passengers, thus it is easier to fill during the period of low air travel demand.
Thousands of crew members were also told that they were laid off.
The International Air Transport Association, which represents 290 airlines, expects global airlines to lose more than $ 84 billion and a million jobs this year.
Last week, United Airlines, one of the three largest companies in the United States, warned its employees that it might have to lay off 36,000 employees due to the massive drop in demand for air travel.
In light of the “ongoing issues surrounding the epidemic,” Helen Becker, managing director and chief research analyst at Queen Investment, said she expected US airlines this year to shed up to 200,000 of their 750,000 employees.
US aviation unions are asking the federal government to add more aid to the $ 25 billion rescue package it has provided so far.
Airlines must protect jobs until the end of September as part of the conditions for receiving state assistance.
A spokesman for the International Air Transport Association said the size of job cuts in the aviation sector “shows the severe economic crisis facing the industry and all who depend on air transport.”
He added that it is fully understood that governments have imposed restrictions to try to protect people from the Corona virus “but it must be done with full knowledge of economic and social consequences.”
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