London’s Heathrow Airport could axe up to 1,200 jobs, around a quarter of its frontline roles, as a result of a downturn in the industry due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been claimed this atfternoon.
The airport has informed union officials that it was triggering a 45-day consultation period about the proposed cuts, Sky News said, citing unidentified sources.
Insiders told Sky that a deal is still possible if unions could agree revised terms but that if an agreement wasn’t reached, approximately one-fifth of Heathrow’s total workforce of about 5,700 people could be put at risk, the insider said.
Heathrow has seen passenger numbers drop dramatically during the last six months, with July’s traffic reportedly down 95% year-on-year.
Heathrow is set to axe up a quarter of its frontline staff as the number of passengers travelling through Heathrow Airport last month fell by nearly 7 million compared to July 2019
Just 867,000 people travelling through the west London airport last month, compared with 7.7million in July 2019.
The airport is hoping to find a deal that would cut employee pay and change benefits.
It said in a statement: ‘Covid-19 has decimated the aviation industry, which has led to an unprecedented drop in passenger numbers at Heathrow, costing the airport over £1 billion since the start of March.
‘Provisional traffic figures for August show passenger numbers remain 82% down on last year and we must urgently adapt to this new reality.
Last month Ryanair slashed flight capacity by a fifth over a drop in the number of passenger bookings, while Easyjet announced it was closing bases in Stansted, Southend and Newcastle, which currently have 670 members of staff
‘Discussions with our unions have taken place over four months and our final offer is informed by feedback we have received from them.
‘But with air travel showing little sign of recovery, these discussions cannot go on indefinitely and we must act now to prevent our situation from worsening.
‘We have now started a period of formal consultation with our unions on our offer, which still guarantees a job at the airport for anyone who wishes to stay with our business.’
The drop in numbers prompted Heathrow’s boss to call on the government to scrap its 14-day quarantine and instead focus on testing travellers from high risk countries last month.
A spokesman for the airport said in a statement: ‘Covid-19 has decimated the aviation industry which has led to an unprecedented drop in passenger numbers at Heathrow, costing the airport over £1 billion since the start of March.
‘Provisional traffic figures for August show passenger numbers remain 82% down on last year and we must urgently adapt to this new reality.
‘Discussions with our Unions have taken place over four months and our final offer is informed by feedback we have received from them.
‘But with air travel showing little sign of recovery, these discussions cannot go on indefinitely and we must act now to prevent our situation from worsening.
‘We have now started a period of formal consultation with our Unions on our offer, which still guarantees a job at the airport for anyone who wishes to stay with our business.’
Environment Secretary George Eustice said earlier this week that border controls were always kept under review, but warned that screening on arrival would not remove the risk of the disease being imported into the country.
It comes a week after Gatwick announced plans to axe up to 600 jobs in a ‘signifcant restructure’ after feeling the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on passenger and air traffic numbers.
The airport is operating at around 20 per cent of its capacity and has around 75 per cent of its staff on furlough.
Consultations have begun with staff over redundancies, as it prepares to cut up to 24 per cent of its workforce.
Passenger numbers across the UK were down 89 per cent last month compared to last July.
The number of passengers flying into UK airports surged to 1.3million people in July – compared to just 200,000 arriving in each month during April, May and June.
But figures from 12 months ago showed around 11.1million people flew into the UK’s airports.
Pilots, cabin crew and other airline workers have all been struck with redundancies after the Covid-19 pandemic grounded the majority of flights six months ago.
Hopes that the summer would bring more passengers have been dashed by changing quarantine measures at some of Europe’s most popular tourist destinations.
Yesterday Willie Walsh, the CEO of BA owner International Airlines Group accused the government of causing ‘further chaos and hardship’ for travellers based on ‘arbitrary’ statistics.
British Airways CEO Willie Walsh has accused the government of causing ‘further chaos,’ amid claims Portugal is about to go back on the UK’s quarantine list
He wrote in The Times: ‘Another U-turn by the Government, adding Portugal to the quarantine list, will cause further chaos and hardship for travellers.
‘The Government is using arbitrary statistics to effectively ban 160 countries and in the process destroying the economy. The Government needs to introduce a testing regime to restore confidence.’
He added that the ‘ever-shifting list’ of countries requiring two weeks of quarantine means ‘the UK has officially hung up the ‘Closed’ sign’.
British Airways, which grounded its Gatwick fleet in March following the outbreak of Covid-19, had said that all short-haul flights from Gatwick will be consolidated into Heathrow until at least September.
BA itself announced it would be forced to cut hundreds of jobs at Gatwick in a bid to stay afloat during the fallout of the coronavirus.
Last month budget airline easyJet annouced it was closing its bases in Stansted, Southend and Newcastle in a cost-cutting drive – as Ryanair reduced its flight capacity by a fifth.
Jet2 also announced it was making 102 pilots redundant.
Engineering companies supplying the aviation industry and have also been hit hard in recent months.
Airbus, Europe’s biggest aircraft maker, last week announced plans to slash nearly 15,000 jobs across its global operations – including 1,700 in the UK.
Last week Rolls Royce reported a £5.4billion loss in the first half of 2020 as its CEO announced it had halved the number of aircraft engines it had built so far this year – after shedding 4,000 jobs.
Chief executive Warren East said: ‘About 4,000 people so far this year have left the organisation, that’s spread across the whole group, the UK Germany, Singapore, all around the world.
‘It includes about 2,500 voluntary redundancies and early retirements in the UK and we expect to be at about 5,000 by the end of this year.
‘We simply don’t need the scale of manufacturing facilities that we have, what we’re doing is consolidating things to achieve greater efficiency where we do make things.’