Shakespeare once wrote “beware the ides of March ” which could be updated to “the ides of May “judging by the significant job losses proposed by Aer Lingus, British Airways and Ryanair.
Routes ex Ireland are bound to be affected by these cutbacks, which will be reflected by less frequencies to many destinations coupled with the closure of other routes.These measures are also bound to be reflected with fare increases and other cutbacks, writes Michael Flood.
Ryanair has announced that it will be cutting 3,000 jobs, because of the impact of COVID-19.
In a trading statement Ryanair said the pandemic has impacted both its first quarter results and how it expects the on-going grounding of flights to impact its future economic outlook.
“Due to Continent wide EU Government flight restrictions, Ryanair expects to operate less than 1% of its scheduled flying program in Apr, May & June 2020. Q1 traffic of less than 150,000 passengers will be 99.5% behind the Q1 budget of 42.4m passengers. While some return to flight services is expected in the second (July-Sept) quarter, Ryanair expects to carry no more than 50% of its original traffic target of 44.6m in Q2,” it advised.
Aer Lingus called a meeting with the trade unions to suggest that the carrier was planning to cut 900 jobs from it’s staff total of 4,500.A statement from Aer Lingus said: “Aer Lingus is continuing to communicate directly with our employees and engage with their representative bodies.”
Aer Lingus has also announced an agreement with the Dubai owned, DNATA to supply the airlines in-flight catering from June. All outbound flights from Dublin will have catering supplied by DNATA .
British Airways announced that were looking at shedding 12,000 staff across all positions, this from a total 45,000.It has also been reported that the airline is considering ceasing Gatwick flights and consolidating all it’s operations at London Heathrow.
“Alex Cruz, CEO of British Airways says “This has been a difficult message to write and one I never thought I would need to send” amid the largest crisis to face aviation in history”.
“British Airways prepares to permanently remove 28.5% of its workforce, including pilots and crew, CEO of BA writes:
“There there is no ‘normal’ any longer”
“We are taking every possible action to conserve cash — all of these actions alone are not enough”
