Airbus SE CEO Guillaume Faury stepped up his warning that more jobs might need to be cut at the European aircraft maker as a sharper-than-expected decline in travel leads carriers to push back deliveries of new jets.
“The situation has worsened” coming out of the summer peak season, he said in an interview on RTL radio yesterday. “Airlines are in a more difficult situation after the holidays than what we were hoping.”
The firm, whose cost-cutting plans call for the elimination of 15,000 jobs, would need to “adapt to the new environment,” he added, in particular on the employment front.
Photo: AFP
“It will be very difficult to stick with voluntary departures,” Faury said, reiterating that the company “is potentially at risk” if it does not take the right steps.
There has been a 40 percent decline in Airbus’ production and deliveries, he added.
The European rival to Boeing Co, grappling with an unprecedented collapse in air travel because of COVID-19, is trying to entice workers to leave to limit tougher measures.
France is braced to absorb about one-third of the planned cuts and Faury yesterday said that talks with unions are aimed at using tools like part-time employment and state support of research and development to avoid forcing people to leave the company.
“Airlines aren’t canceling their orders, but they aren’t honoring deliveries,” Faury said. “The delays on deliveries are very strong” as carriers do not have the means to take ownership of the airplanes after passengers and revenue dried up.
Airbus’ 40 percent reduction in output is holding, but “I’m extremely cautious about how the crisis is developing and what is coming next with COVID-19,” he said.
While Faury had said that voluntary measures were unlikely to be enough to meet Airbus’ job-cut target, he has voiced additional concerns in the past few weeks.
“No one can guarantee that there won’t be forced departures,” he said yesterday. “We have lots of work to do and will do everything to avoid getting to that.”
The pessimistic outlook for the industry was driven home on Monday when Deutsche Lufthansa AG accelerated fleet and staff cuts amid mounting concern about the severity of the downturn.
Europe’s biggest airline would pull 150 aircraft by mid-decade, 50 more than in its previous plan, leading to more job cuts than the 22,000 due to go.
Air France-KLM CEO Ben Smith also weighed in, saying in an interview with L’Opinion that more cost cuts might be needed after travel demand dropped off at the end of the summer.
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