Sat 11 July 2020:
The Middle Eastern Emirates is looking to cut up to 9,000 jobs due to the Covid crisis.
Sit Tim Clark, president of the airline, claimed that Emirates had already lost a tenth of its staff before the pandemic began, but that the dismissals would set to continue, possibly cutting another 15% of the 60,000 staff.
Although Clark claimed when speaking to the BBC, that the airline was not “as badly off as others”, the industry as a whole has been hit extremely hard by the coronavirus pandemic and faces losing $84bn and one million jobs this year, according to the International Air Transport Association.
The Middle East’s largest carrier, which operates a fleet of 270 wide-bodied aircraft, halted operations in late March as part of global shutdowns to stem the spread of the virus.
It resumed two weeks later on a limited network and plans to fly to 58 cities by mid-August, down from about 157 before the crisis.
Before the crisis hit, Emirates employed some 60,000 staff, including 4,300 pilots and nearly 22,000 cabin crew, according to its annual report.
A company spokeswoman told AFP the airline had nothing to add to the report.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has said that airlines are in line to make a combined net loss of more than $84 billion this year in the wake of the pandemic crisis, the biggest in the industry’s history.
Clark said in the interview that Emirates was “not as badly off as others” but that the crisis hit just as it was “heading for one of our best years ever”.
The Dubai-based airline had reported a bumper 21 percent rise in annual profits in March.
Staff that still remain fear that the situation at Emirates is only getting worse as around 700 pilots were given their notice just this week, at least 1200 pilots have been dismissed since the crisis began, as well as thousands of cabin crew.
The cuts have affected the staff who work on Airbus planes as oppose to those flying Boeings, as the latter, being smaller, hold fewer passengers meaning they are not as difficult to fill, as air travel is practically on hold for most people.
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