European aircraft manufacturer Airbus will cut around 15,000 jobs in one year. The company is responding to the adverse effects of the coronavirus crisis on the aviation industry.
“Airbus is facing the most serious crisis the industry has ever experienced,” said CEO Guillaume Faury. “The measures we have taken so far have allowed us to absorb the initial shock of this global pandemic. We must now ensure that we can sustain our business and leave the crisis as a healthy global leader in aerospace,” he added.
Airbus plans to cut about 5,000 jobs in France and 6,000 jobs in Germany. Nine hundred jobs are expected to be cut in Spain and 1,700 in Britain. The company intends to layoff another 1,300 workers in other countries around the world. Airbus currently employs around 135,000 people.
The French government considers Airbus’s plans to cut jobs to be “excessive.” “We expect Airbus to make full use of the tools provided by the government to reduce job losses,” a government source said. “Airbus must also reduce involuntary departures as much as possible,” he added. Trade unions are also opposed to redundancies.
In a letter to employees, Faury wrote that the economic crisis could deepen as a result of the pandemic. At the same time, he warned against the nationalism that had marked the multinational company in previous layoffs.
The coronavirus crisis has led to a drastic reduction in air traffic, which has reduced demand for new aircraft. Faury recently said that Airbus would cut production and deliveries by 40 percent over the next two years due to the coronavirus crisis compared to the original plan.
In today’s report, Airbus pointed out that it did not expect air traffic to return to pre-coronavirus levels before 2023. It even warned that this return could not take place until 2025.
In the first quarter of this year, the company reported a net loss of 481 million euros. In comparison, a year ago it generated a profit of 40 million euros. Its sales fell by 15 percent to 10.6 billion euros.