EasyJet is planning to make as many as one in three of its pilots redundant and close its bases at Stansted, Southend and Newcastle airports.
The airline is planning to cut up to 727 pilot jobs and up to 1,200 cabin crew jobs across the UK. It started consultations with unions in the UK on Tuesday after announcing last month that it would be making a total of about 4,500 staff redundant across Europe.
EasyJet’s chief executive, Johan Lundgren, said: “These are very difficult proposals to put forward in what is an unprecedented and difficult time for the airline and the industry as a whole.
“Unfortunately, the lower-demand environment means we need fewer aircraft and have less opportunity for work for our people. We are committed to working constructively with our employee representatives across the network with the aim of minimising job losses as far as possible.”
Other UK airlines are expecting to make a similar proportion of staff redundant, with BA cutting up to 12,000 jobs, and Virgin Atlantic and Ryanair both expecting to cut 3,000.
About a third of the easyJet job losses are expected to come at the three bases, with potential further job losses in ground operations and aircraft maintenance roles at those airports.
Some flights will continue in and out of Newcastle and Stansted, operated by planes and crew based elsewhere, but there is less certainty for Southend, where easyJet is a key airline customer.
The airline said it remained committed to its UK operations, where it has 163 planes across 11 bases, flying more than 50 million passengers annually before coronavirus. EasyJet said it believed pre-Covid-19 passenger numbers would not return until 2023 and that it would “continue to review its network and bases”.
The pilots’ union, Balpa, said that the layoffs were “an overreaction” and that it would be “fighting to save every single job”. The Balpa general secretary, Brian Strutton, said: “We know that aviation is in the midst of the Covid crisis, and we had been expecting easyJet to make an announcement of temporary measures to help the airline through to recovery. But this seems an overreaction, and easyJet won’t find a supply of pilots waiting to come back when the recovery takes place over the next two years.”
He called for the government to step in with measures to help aviation in the UK, which he said was “caught in a death spiral of despair”.
Any bailout at easyjet would be controversial after the airline paid a £174m dividend to shareholders in March, when the crisis was already under way. The airline has also used the government’s furlough scheme to pay thousands of its staff.
The Unite union, which represents cabin crew and other aviation workers, said it was another massive blow for the industry and highlighted the urgent need for government support.
Unite’s national officer for civil aviation, Oliver Richardson, said easyJet had its “priorities all wrong … it has paid a multimillion dividend to its shareholders, borrowed hundred of millions from the government to buy new aircraft, and has fully utilised the job retention scheme. It absolutely should not be allowed to make huge redundancies a few weeks later.”
He added: “We are now more than three months on since the chancellor promised support for UK aviation. The government’s ongoing failure to provide such support is directly resulting in huge job losses throughout the industry and is threatening the viability of airlines and airports alike.”
The detail of job losses at easyJet will fuel concerns about the fate of smaller, regional airports in particular. Earlier on Tuesday, Birmingham airport announced that it would be laying off up to 250 people, more than a quarter of directly employed staff, due to the coronavirus downturn.
Ground services and baggage handling group Swissport last week announced that it was halving its UK workforce, resulting in 4,500 job losses, and that it had already begun the process of making 500 staff redundant at its Midlands hub.
EasyJet last week launched a rights issue to raise another £450m in cash, having already accessed a £600m Bank of England loan as part of a £2bn war chest to survive the prolonged grounding of its fleet.
EasyJet restarted limited flights two weeks ago and still hopes to fly to most European destinations this summer, on a greatly reduced schedule, if travel restrictions are lifted.
