British Airways plans to lose more than 1,100 pilots and make heavy cuts to its Gatwick airport operation as part of 12,000 redundancies.
The airline has informed staff of detailed plans after it announced on Tuesday evening that it intended to lay off up to 30% of its workforce.
Letters sent to union representatives for all sections of the airline set out swingeing cuts, as well as drastic changes to terms and conditions across the company as it responds to the grounding of most air travel since March due to the coronavirus pandemic.
BA plans to lay off almost four in five crew managers at Gatwick and 60% of other cabin crew, more than 1100 of almost 1900 staff. The jobs of just over 400 ground staff will be outsourced to the airport and its contractors.
In emails to staff and unions, managers at BA warned that “there is no certainty as to when services can return” to London City or Gatwick airports, and that they had “not ruled out suspending the remainder of our Heathrow operation”.
Ground staff at Heathrow are also likely to be forced to accept the same contracts as recent starters, which pay around £10,000-15,000 less, according to employees.
All 4,346 pilots will be asked to sign new contracts changing their terms and conditions, and accept new rostering arrangements. BA will be seeking to lay off 1130 pilots.
Pilots union Balpa said it would fight to save every pilot job. The general secretary, Brian Strutton, said: “The company has declined government support claiming it is financially secure enough to survive the coronavirus crisis, so it is hard to see how these cuts can be justified.
“There are many options to ensure BA can continue its business and survive coronavirus and Balpa does not accept that job losses are the only answer.”
The Unite union has described BA’s moves as “unlawful and immoral”.
Around 22,000 BA employees were furloughed in April and May, while pilots accepted unpaid leave instead of furloughing to allow them to restart swiftly should travel recommence.
The general secretary of Unite, Len McCluskey, said: “UK taxpayers have not handed over their money to BA for it to embark on an opportunistic course of slashing jobs, conditions and wages, and potentially jeopardising jobs right across [the] aviation sector.”
BA’s parent company IAG announced the planned redundancies to the Stock Exchange on Tuesday. In a memo to staff, the BA chief executive, Álex Cruz, said: “What we are facing as an airline … is that there is no ‘normal’ any longer.
“We do not know when countries will reopen their borders or when the lockdowns will lift, and so we have to reimagine and reshape our airline and create a new future for our people, our customers and the destinations we serve.”
IAG has declined to seek government help, unlike Virgin Atlantic, which has so far been rebuffed, or EasyJet, which has received a £600m Bank of England loan.
