LONDON, May 28 (Xinhua) -- British low-cost airline easyJet announced Thursday that it plans to cut up to 30 percent of its 15,000-strong workforce in a move to reduce cost and improve productivity amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
"To effect the restructure of our business, easyJet will shortly launch an employee consultation process on proposals to reduce staff numbers by up to 30 percent," said the airline in a statement, suggesting up to 4,500 employees may lose their jobs.
The plan is part of the airline's efforts to seek "the reduced fleet, the optimisation of our network and bases, improved productivity as well as the promotion of more efficient ways of working", said the firm, adding that a consultation process with staff will be held in the coming days.
"We realise that these are very difficult times and we are having to consider very difficult decisions which will impact our people, but we want to protect as many jobs as we can for the long-term," said Johan Lundgren, CEO of easyJet.
Meanwhile, the firm is continuing to take "decisive action" to slash cost at every business level, including "airports & ground handling", "maintenance" and "selling and marketing".
"We will continue to remove cost and non-critical expenditure at every level," Lundgren said,
In the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2020, the airline is expected to fly around 30 percent of the planned capacity flown in Q4 2019, as the company will keep evaluating the changing regulations and customer demand, said the firm.
Thursday's announcement came just a week after it declared to resume flights on June 15, with initial schedule being expected to comprise mainly domestic flying in Britain and France.
"Although we will restart flying on 15 June, we expect demand to build slowly, only returning to 2019 levels in about three years' time," said Lundgren. Enditem
