China News Agency, London, August 8 (Zhao Xing and Zhangping) British Airways, the oldest airline in the UK, announced on the 7th a layoff plan of tens of thousands of employees, reducing a total of about 10,700 jobs.
A British Airways spokesperson said, “The semi-annual report released last week clearly shows that the new crown virus epidemic has caused a huge financial distress for our company. We must take all possible actions immediately and make difficult layoff decisions to do our best. Protect the remaining more jobs."
The layoff plan will mainly affect the crew, engineers and airport staff. The airline has reached a "basic outline agreement" with the pilot union last month, and 85% of the pilots agreed to reduce their salaries to ensure that the number of layoffs for pilots is minimized.
An airline spokesperson said that the new crown virus epidemic is an "absolute disaster" for the global aviation industry. British Airways’ main revenue comes from business travel and long-distance routes to destinations such as the United States, Australia and India, most of which have been grounded. In the nearly five months since the United Kingdom implemented the “epidemic blockade” ban, British Airways’ actual flight operations were less than 20% of the original plan before the epidemic. Like many competitors and major airlines, British Airways had to take forced vacations, shut down more than 30,000 employees, and borrowed 300 million pounds from the Bank of England Support Fund of the Central Bank to bail out.
According to statistics, since the outbreak of the new crown virus, major companies in the UK have announced the reduction of more than 100,000 jobs. (Finish)