London (dpa) - A pilots' trade union said British Airways staff were "devastated" on Tuesday after the airline's owner announced plans for up to 12,000 redundancies.
"In light of the impact of Covid-19 on current operations and the expectation that the recovery of passenger demand to 2019 levels will take several years, British Airways is formally notifying its trade unions about a proposed restructuring and redundancy programme," International Consolidated Airline Group (IAG) said.
"The proposals remain subject to consultation but it is likely that they will affect most of British Airways' employees and may result in the redundancy of up to 12,000 of them," IAG said in a quarterly financial statement.
Brian Strutton, general secretary of pilots' trade union BALPA, said BA staff were "devastated" by the announcement.
"This has come as a bolt out of the blue from an airline that said it was wealthy enough to weather the Covid[-19] storm and declined any government support," Strutton said in a statement via Twitter.
"BALPA does not accept that a case has been made for these job losses and we will be fighting to save every single one," he added.
Jim McMahon, the main opposition Labour party’s transport spokesman, said the Conservative government "should have stepped in sooner and done more to protect jobs."
"It was always clear aviation needed a sector specific deal to alleviate the immediate financial pressures that exist, yet the government failed to act," McMahon said.
"The government must do more to ensure that airlines and airports have the financial resources needed to operate in a safe environment for staff and customers when the time is right to transition out of the lockdown."
BA employs about 45,000 people, including 16,500 cabin crew and 3,900 pilots and 4,700 engineers, according to its official website.
IAG said its revenue fell 13 per cent to 4.6 billion euros (5 billion dollars) in the three months ended March 31, causing a quarterly operating loss of 535 million euros, according to preliminary figures.
IAG said it lost an additional 1.3 billion euros through the "ineffectiveness of its fuel and foreign currency hedges for the rest of 2020 due to over-hedging."
It has reduced passenger capacity in April and May by 94 per cent compared with last year, "only operating flights for essential travel and repatriation."
Willie Walsh, IAG’s chief executive, said last month that he expected passenger demand to "remain weak until well into the summer."
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