The COVID-19 pandemic has a devastating effect on the global air industry. While it became evident that airlines will suffer a long-lasting impact, more and more airlines announced job cuts and layoffs as a necessary response to the crisis.
With passenger numbers on an all-time low, parked aircraft, and travel restrictions, airlines are undergoing the biggest crisis ever. And there is no day without news from airlines about countermeasures. Obviously, layoffs and job cuts are measures many airlines —unfortunately— have to take. We took a closer look at the world’s biggest airlines and went through the latest announcement. Here’s what we found out.
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Airline Layoffs — A Summary
Before we get into the details, here’s a quick summary of what we found out:
- Chinese airlines seem to handle the crisis better or are less impacted. As a result, China’s biggest airlines, China Southern and China Eastern have (currently) no plans to cut jobs.
- Although not included in the list, we couldn’t find any Chinese airlines’ announcements about job layoffs.
- Low-cost airlines seem to handle the crisis in a better way compared to legacy/network carrier. Accordingly, job cuts are marginal compared to network carriers.
- With up to 40,000, Lufthansa Group is leading the list of most significant job cuts.
Airline Layoffs — The Details
And here are the detailed plans of the twelve biggest airlines in the world when it comes to job cuts. The numbers are based on our research between 5th and 6th October.
| Airline | Country | Number Of Layoffs |
|---|---|---|
| Delta Airlines | United States | Not yet decided |
| American Airlines | United States | 19,000 |
| Lufthansa Group | Germany | 40,000 |
| United Airlines | United States | 12,000 |
| Air France / KLM | France | 7,500 |
| IAG | Spain, United Kingdom | 13,000 |
| Southwest Airlines | United States | No plans yet |
| China Southern | China | No plans yet |
| All Nippon Airlines | Japan | No plans yet |
| China Eastern | China | No plans yet |
| Emirates | United Arab Emirates | 10,000 |
| Ryanair | Ireland | 3,000 |
| Total | 104,500 |
Sources
And if you are up to the details, here are the links to the news article that contain the numbers shown above.
- Delta Airlines
- American Airlines
- Lufthansa
- United Airlines
- Air France
- IAG
- Southwest Airlines
- Emirates
- Ryanair
Want To Know More? Here’s Where To Start!
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