Emirates Group Says Job Cuts Needed With Planes Grounded

(Bloomberg) --

Emirates Group said it will be forced to cut jobs as the operator of the world's largest long-haul carrier seeks to reduce costs after the coronavirus pandemic grounded air travel.

The company has “come to the conclusion that we unfortunately have to say goodbye to a few of the wonderful people that worked with us,” according to a statement distributed by Dubai's media office. “We continuously are reassessing the situation and will have to adapt to this transitional period.”

Emirates didn't say how many jobs will be lost.

The Dubai-based group could slash the number of employees by about 30% from more than 105,000 at the end of March, people familiar with the matter said last month. Emirates is also considering accelerating the retirement of its fleet of Airbus SEA380s -- of which it is the biggest operator, some of the people said, declining to be identified because the information hasn't been made public.

Dubai's government said in March it would financially support the airline, which has taken a slew of measures to shore up cash since the virus outbreak. Those include temporarily cutting salaries, grounding most of its passenger flights and deferring the delivery of the last batch of the A380 superjumbos.

Sunday's statement also said:

“We do not view this lightly, and the company is doing everything possible to protect jobs wherever we can. Where we are forced to take tough decisions we will treat people with fairness and respect.
“We will work with impacted employees to ensure they are looked after and taken care of with necessary means.”
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