Australia's Qantas plans to cut at least 6,000 jobs

Australia's largest airline says it plans to cut at least 6,000 jobs and keep 15,000 more workers on extended furloughs as it tries to survive ecomic impacts of coronavirus pandemic.

Qantas anunced a plan Thursday to reduce costs by billions of dollars and raise fresh capital.

plan includes grounding 100 planes for a year or more and immediately retiring its six remaining Boeing 747 planes.

Chief Executive Alan Joyce said airline has to become smaller as it braces for several years of much lower revenues.

He said furloughed workers faced a long interruption to ir airline careers.

" actions that we're taking will have a huge impact on thousands of our people. This is something that weighs very heavily on all of us," Joyce told reporters in Sydney.

"This is something that we don't make a decision on very easily. But collapse of billions of dollars in revenue leaves us with little choice if we are to save as many jobs as possible longer term," he ded.

Joyce said airline entered crisis in a better position than most airlines and remained optimistic about future.

"This crisis has still hit us very, very hard and impact will be felt for a long time," Joyce said.

In a plan filed with Australian stock exchange, Qantas said it would reduce costs by 15 billion Australian dollars ($10 billion) over three years and raise new equity of $1.9 billion AUD to help accelerate airline's recovery and position it for new opportunities.

Qantas employs about 29,000 people.

Joyce said he expected only about 8,000 of m would be working by next month, and 15,000 by end of year.

He said that as international routes opened back over next two years, he hoped workforce would increase again to 21,000.

He said airline planned to be back to 40% of its pre-crisis domestic flying by July, but that international routes would take much longer to return.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Thursday it wanted to help former Qantas employees suffering from "terrible job losses" to find new work in or parts of ecomy.

He said he retained hope for Australian ecomy, especially after International Monetary Fund pointed out it was navigating financial crisis better than most or developed ecomies.

"And that's where hope comes from, because hope says that we're on our way back. And as hard as se days are, re are better days ahe," Morrison told reporters in Sydney.