Paris (AFP)

Airbus is preparing to announce on Tuesday a restructuring plan providing for massive job cuts to deal with the air transport crisis which has led the European aircraft manufacturer to reduce its production rates by more than a third.

This plan must be presented in the afternoon to the unions during an extraordinary group committee, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The planned cuts are in the order of 15,000 positions, including a third in France, the country where the manufacturer is most established, according to one of these sources, confirming information from La Tribune.

These job cuts should almost exclusively affect the commercial aviation branch of the group - also present in defense, space and helicopters - as well as several subsidiaries such as the French Stelia Aerospace or the German Premium Aerotec.

Asked by AFP, Airbus did not comment.

For France, the plan should be detailed during an Airbus France group committee Thursday morning in Blagnac, headquarters of the aircraft manufacturer in the suburbs of Toulouse, according to a union source, for whom these figures seem "consistent" with the decline of production announced.

For several weeks, Guillaume Faury, the group's executive chairman with 135,000 employees, including 81,000 in his commercial aircraft branch, has warned that the crisis caused by the epidemic due to the coronavirus is putting "Airbus survival" at stake.

"The scale of the Covid-19 crisis for our sector requires Airbus to adapt. This adaptation in fact means a significant reduction in the size of our business. After decades of uninterrupted growth, it is a real test. It forces us to bitter decisions, "he wrote in a letter to the employees.

The Airbus group has 49,000 employees in France, 45,500 in Germany, 12,500 in Spain and 11,000 in the United Kingdom. The job cuts would therefore affect more than 10% of the total workforce. The Defense and Space branch of Airbus, facing a difficult market, already announced in February a restructuring plan providing for 2,665 job cuts.

The big rival, the American Boeing, announced to him at the end of April its intention to cut 10% of its workforce, or 16,000 people, via voluntary departures and layoffs.

- Behind Airbus, the suppliers -

Faced with the stopping of air traffic, Airbus reduced its production rates by around a third, for example from 60 to 40 aircraft of the A320 family produced per month.

"We have lowered rates roughly by a third compared to what they were at the end of 2019. This represents a drop in activity of 40% compared to what we had planned to do in 2020 and 2021" , explained Guillaume Faury to AFP on the occasion of the announcement of the support plan of 15 billion euros from the French government to its aeronautical sector.

Behind Airbus, thousands of suppliers, mostly small and medium-sized enterprises, are affected. The equipment supplier Daher has already announced the elimination of a maximum of 1,300 positions out of the group's 10,000.

"We anticipate a drop in the need for new aircraft from 40% to 60% in the next 5 years" before a resumption of activity in the second part of the decade, said Rémy Bonnery, aeronautical expert at Archery consulting.

This should first be pulled by medium-haul planes before wide-body aircraft, long-haul traffic being the last to restart, experts agree, for whom air traffic should not regain its level of 2019 before 2023 at best.

If Airbus has an impressive order book of more than 7,600 aircraft which "gives it long-term visibility", this represents only "limited short-term protection", estimates Rémy Bonnery because orders generally have little financial impact on companies.

"In this crisis, one of the big difficulties is adapting in the very short term but continuing to prepare the future to remain competitive", according to Guillaume Faury, who "wants to be able to keep teams and skills to minimize the impact on the 'employment', in particular via partial unemployment measures.

© 2020 AFP