Airlines increase job cuts as pandemic crushes air travel

Major airlines on both sides of Atlantic are cutting even more jobs as y struggle to cope with a plunge in air travel that will leave airline industry much smaller than it was before coronavirus pandemic and ecomic collapse.

EasyJet said Thursday that it will cut up to one-third of its 15,000 employees. London-based budget airline's CEO said he h choice.

“We do it to make sure that easyJet t only survives through this period, but also comes out of this as a strong and competitive company,″ Johan Lundgren said. “This is still worst crisis that this industry has ever been faced with. re’s a huge amount of uncertainty going forward."

American Airlines, meanwhile, plans to cut its 17,000 manment and support staff by 30% — about 5,100 jobs. That could include layoffs in October if re aren’t eugh takers for a buyout offer.

Executive Vice President Elise Eberwein said in a memo to employees that nearly 39,000 or employees have signed up for partially paid leave or early retirement, and airline is extending a buyout offer to ministrative staff. Laid-off workers will be paid through Sept. 30 to comply with a -furloughs provision attached to $5.8 billion in government aid that American is getting to help cover payroll costs.

Delta Air Lines said Thursday that it will extend early-retirement and buyouts offers in a bid to limit layoffs in fall. About 40,000 of Delta's 91,000 employees have alrey agreed to take unpaid leave.

“While we never dreamed just a few months ago that we would be talking about a smaller Delta — this was expected to be a year of growth, after all — this is reality we’re facing,” CEO Ed Bastian said in a memo to employees.

It's t just airlines. Boeing anunced that it will eliminate about 13,000 jobs worldwide, including sending layoff tices this week to 6,770 U.S. employees, because of falling demand for new planes.

Airlines are reporting a slight increase in passengers since mid-April, when number of flyers fell to under 100,000 a day in U.S., a level t seen since 1950s. But carriers are bracing for a slow recovery — it will take time for many people to feel safe from virus while flying.

“It will likely be two to three years before we see demand recovery on a large scale,” Bastian said.

Around world, airlines have grounded about 15,000 jets– more than half global fleet – and pressed some planes into cargo duty to bring in revenue. y have cut back to bare-bones schedules to reduce costs and match small number of people who are still flying.

In some case, those moves have t been eugh. Several major airlines have filed for bankruptcy protection, including two largest carriers in Latin America, Latam and Avianca. y are continuing to fly while hoping to reorganize ir finances and shed debt.

Latin American carriers have t received government aid to prop m up. Major airlines in Europe and United States are on better footing after receiving promises of billions in assistance. If pandemic rs on and air travel remains severely depressed this fall, however, re are guarantees, even for strongest airlines.

In United States, bankruptcy speculation has swirled around American Airlines, which has most debt and shortest time to wait for a travel recovery, given its faster rate of burning through remaining cash. CEO Doug Parker tried to quash chatter.

“I’ve heard people say that,” Parker said during an investor conference. “We don’t look at (a bankruptcy filing) as an option, that’s failure.”

Parker predicted that every U.S. airline will survive but industry will emerge 10% to 20% smaller in 2021 than it was before pandemic.

airlines' troubles are creating ripples through aviation industry, at aircraft makers Boeing and Airbus and ir suppliers. General Electric Co. is cutting jobs in its aircraft-engine business. So is Spirit AeroSystems, which makes fusels and or components.

Unions representing workers in aviation fear that companies are using emergency to shed employees unnecessarily. Some, like Brian Strutton, general secretary of Balpa, British pilots’ union, said he was shocked by scale of cuts anunced at easyJet.

“Given easyJet is a British company, U.K. is its strongest market and it has h hundreds of millions in support from U.K. taxpayer, I can safely say that we will need a lot of convincing that easyJet needs to make such dramatic cuts,” Strutton said. He called downturn a “temporary problem” that doesn’t require massive job losses.

Airlines are looking for governments to help t only with financial aid but to take steps that might encour more people to fly.

U.S. airlines want government to screen passengers for fever, although some public health officials question temperature reings as a reliable indicator of wher someone is infected with coronavirus.

EasyJet's Lundgren sharply criticized U.K. government's move to begin requiring a 14-day quarantine period for international visitors.

“How do you explain to British people that we’ll see Germans and or European nationalities going to holidays in Greece and parts of Spain where re’s less risk of being infected than in places in U.K.?″ he said.

Im Credits: AP