Indian airline IndiGo has announced that it will let go of 10% of its employees due to the dramatic decline in demand for air travel due to Covid-19.
Indigo, India's largest airline, said it will reduce its workforce by 10% as it was hit by decreasing revenues due to lower air travel demand caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The airline announced last month that it would cut costs of up to 40 billion rupees or $533 million.
Job cuts at IndiGo
It became the latest carrier to announce employee cuts due to the impact of the pandemic.
In a letter to investors, IndiGo chief executive officer (CEO) Ronojoy Dutta said: "It is impossible for our company to fly through this economic storm without making some sacrifices, in order to sustain our business operations."
IndiGo has approximately 24,000 employees and the cuts would mean around 2,400 jobs will potentially be lost in the process. The airline has been grounded for several months due to the Indian government's strict lockdown policy.
IndiGo is the country's largest passenger airline with a market share of 48.9% as of March and had been profitable for 10 years in a row.
Other airlines affected by the pandemic
Two weeks ago, Middle Eastern airline Emirates announced that it will undertake as many as 9,000 job cuts due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
The job cuts were announced by Emirates president Sir Tim Clark, attributing the move to the severe impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the global airline industry. This is the first time that the UAE flag carrier disclosed the number of potential job losses.
Clark said the airline, which had 60,000 employees prior to the pandemic, had already cut a tenth of its staff but said: "We will probably have to let go of a few more, probably up to 15%."
While he claimed that Emirates was "not as badly off as others", the current situation represents a steep turnaround from what he said before the pandemic was "heading for one of our best years ever".
At least 700 of the airline’s 4,500 pilots were given redundancy notices, which means at least 1,200 have been notified about the loss of their jobs since the coronavirus crisis started.
The redundancies were mainly issued to pilots who fly Airbus planes, rather than Boeing aircraft.
Meanwhile, UK flag carrier British Airways announced last week that it will be retiring all of its Boeing 747 aircraft amidst the dramatic decline in travel due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The British airline is the world’s largest operator of the 747 jumbo jets, having 31 aircraft in its fleet.
A spokesman for the airline said: "It is with great sadness that we can confirm we are proposing to retire our entire 747 fleet with immediate effect."
"It is unlikely our magnificent ‘queen of the skies’ will ever operate commercial services for British Airways again due to the downturn in travel caused by the Covid-19 global pandemic," the spokesman continued.
The UK airline originally planned to retire the 747 planes in 2024 but the travel downturn due to the pandemic forced it to undertake this earlier.
