BA to press ahead with job cuts plans despite furlough extension

BA will press ahead with cutbacks that could result in 12,000 job losses, Willie Walsh, the CE of its parent company has said, despite the government’s extension of the furlough scheme. In a letter to the chair of the transport committee, Huw Merriman, Walsh said government pay support would not compensate for “the reality of a structurally changed airline industry in a severely weakened global economy”. “I want to confirm, therefore, that we will not pause our consultations or put our plans on hold,” the IAG chief said. Walsh’s letter is an apparent response to Merriman’s call in the Commons and on Twitter this week for BA to “put these redundancy plans back in the hold where they belong”. The extension of the wage subsidy scheme announced by the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, on Tuesday was intended to pull employers back from a “cliff edge” after which they would be forced to make redundancies. But Walsh has since said the extension only bought IAG “a few extra days”.<br/>