Latvia's airBaltic announces temporary layoffs amid massive flight cancellations

Source: Xinhua | 2020-03-12

Latvia's national carrier airBaltic, which in recent days has been cancelling flights to coronavirus-affected destinations, announced temporary layoffs on Wednesday.

The company said in a statement to the press that airBaltic will keep reducing its capacity for the following three months due to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak in the world.

The massive flight cancellations have necessitated a temporary reduction of airBaltic staff, mainly crew, the company said, indicating that the staff cuts would affect up to 250 jobs. airBaltic has 1,786 employees in total.

The company will seek voluntary solutions like furloughs, as well as terminations, airBaltic management said, announcing the layoff plans at an extraordinary staff meeting Wednesday.

"This is a hard, but necessary decision. We had a very positive start of this year in the first two months, but now we are facing extraordinary circumstances. We must do this now to be able to rehire people and be back on our growth path once the situation improves," said airBaltic CEO Martin Gauss. "Right now, there is no option to continue as usual -- flights need to be cancelled, aircraft grounded, we see a sharp and unexpected decline in bookings."

So far, airBaltic has cancelled 580 flights, scheduled between March 23 and May 31, as the coronavirus continues to spread across the world. Citing health and safety concerns, airBaltic has stopped flying to Milan, Verona and Rome in Italy and Tel Aviv in Israel.