Dubai (AFP)

Emirates, the largest airline in the Middle East, could take four years to return to normal, its CEO said on Monday after the job cuts were announced due to the new coronavirus crisis.

The company of the United Arab Emirates employs 100,000 people and has a fleet of 270 wide-body aircraft. It suspended its activities at the end of March and announced the end of its flights, faced with the pandemic.

Two weeks later, the company resumed limited operations and focused on the return flights of strangers stranded in the Emirates.

"I think by 2022-2023, 2023-2024 we will likely see things return to a certain level of normalcy and Emirates will operate its network as it was," chief executive Tim Clark said on videoconference on Monday. during the Arabian Travel Market trade fair.

On Sunday, Emirates announced layoffs without specifying the extent of the social plan.

"This is something we had to take. We can't leave our people idle for so long. Unfortunately, we have to let go of some of them," said Clark.

Emirates - which posted a 21% increase in profits for the annual year ending in March - hoped to resume operations in the second half of May, said the CEO.

But conditions have not improved enough to allow it, and this has had an impact on offsetting the costs of the pandemic, he added.

Clark, whose retirement scheduled for June has been postponed, said some companies may not survive the crisis.

"I am not optimistic that some of the carriers represented here today, which have already been significantly bailed out, will spend the next few months," he said, adding that the next six to nine months will be "difficult".

"We have never known such an appalling situation (...) This is a huge structural change for our industry," continued the longtime CEO of Emirates.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has estimated that global airlines will lose $ 314 billion in revenue in 2020, a 55% drop from 2019.

"We need to get back on our feet as quickly as possible," said Clark, whose company has ordered 30 Boeing 787s, 126 Boeing 777Xs, as well as 50 Airbus A350-900s and a few Airbus A-380s.

But "we are far from being confident that (...) our cash flow, our profit will allow us to be able to guess that we will buy a hundred of this or a hundred of this", he added, evoking new aircraft orders.

The airline industry is in "a very critical and fragile state" and faces "significant cash flow problems."

"The reality today is that, like all airlines, all bets are open (...) You have to rethink your priorities and one of them is to survive," he said.

© 2020 AFP