COVID-19 impact: Emirates lays off more pilots, crew in latest round of job cuts

Emirates laid off more pilots and cabin crew this week in another round of job cuts as the airline shrinks its workforce due to the coronavirus pandemic, four sources said. A spokesperson for the airline said: "“We can confirm that we are still in the process of implementing the redundancy exercise across our Group, as previously communicated. While we have slowly restarted operations wherever it is safe and commercially viable, our footprint today is significantly smaller than before and it will take a while for us to recover to pre-pandemic levels. Like other airlines and travel companies, COVID-19 has hit us hard, and as a responsible business, we simply must right-size our workforce in line with our reduced operational requirements. Our people have always been a big contributing factor to our success, so this is not an action that we relish, nor one that we take lightly. We continue to take every possible action to reduce costs, restore revenue streams, and preserve jobs.” A company spokeswoman on Thursday did not say how many employees had been made redundant in this week's job cuts or from which departments. The airline has a workforce of 4,300 pilots and nearly 22,000 cabin crew.<br/>