Coronavirus: pilots ‘devastated’ as British Airways set to slash up to 12,000 jobs
- British Airways has 45,000 employees, including 16,500 cabin crew and 3,900 pilots
- The airline industry among the worst hit by the pandemic
A pilots' trade union said British Airways staff were “devastated” after the airline's owner announced plans for up to 12,000 redundancies.
“In light of the impact of Covid-19 on current operations and the expectation that the recovery of passenger demand to 2019 levels will take several years, British Airways is formally notifying its trade unions about a proposed restructuring and redundancy programme,” International Consolidated Airline Group (IAG) said.
“The proposals remain subject to consultation but it is likely that they will affect most of British Airways' employees and may result in the redundancy of up to 12,000 of them,” IAG said in a quarterly financial statement.
Brian Strutton, general secretary of pilots' trade union BALPA, said BA staff were “devastated” by the announcement.
“This has come as a bolt out of the blue from an airline that said it was wealthy enough to weather the Covid[-19] storm and declined any government support,” Strutton said in a statement via Twitter.
“BALPA does not accept that a case has been made for these job losses and we will be fighting to save every single one,” he added.