The airline industry has been in a soup since the coronavirus outbreak in China. As the outbreak turned into a pandemic, the aviation sector came to a total halt bringing the aerospace companies’ nightmares into reality.
The tourism and aviation industry has been one of the most impacted industries in the economic ecosystem due to the pandemic. Most number of layoffs have come from these two industries alone.
Adding to the long list of downsizing exercises across the world, Europe’s biggest budget carrier Ryanair has announced additional layoffs. Recently, Ryanair said that it is still planning to cut around 3,000 additional jobs if it cannot convince pilots and cabin crew for pay cuts.
Group Chief Executive Michael O’Leary earlier told the BBC that the airline had announced about 3,500 job losses, but the spokeswoman later clarified that Ryanair’s plans to cut 3,000 pilot and cabin crew jobs had not changed.
Europe’s biggest budget airline has cut more than 250 staff from its offices around Europe and the additional potential cuts would be split between pilots and cabin crew, with whom the company is currently in pay negotiations.
“We’re looking for 20% from the best paid captains, 5% from the lowest paid flight attendants and we think if we can negotiate those pay cuts by agreement, we can avoid most but not all job losses.” O’Leary told BBC TV.
However, there still remains a ray of hope for the company. Ryanair reported “very strong” bookings from holidaymakers as it relaunched its network with 1,000 flights on Wednesday, the start of a summer that Group Chief Executive Michael O’Leary hopes will restore Europe’s confidence in air travel.
The airline was set to fly 105,000 passengers on Wednesday, almost as many as it flew in April and May combined.
The company said on Wednesday that it expects to fly more than 4.5 million passengers in July as it returns to a more regular schedule with 40% of its usual capacity for the peak summer month.
“It’s a good start,” O’Leary told Reuters in an interview after the first 150 flights took off on time with all passengers wearing face masks.
“If we have a strong July and August with lots of families travelling on holidays … and recognising they can do it safely, I think we will see … a much more stable return to normal volumes from September onwards,” he said.
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