Airline Makes Huge Cuts as It Tries to Survive the Pandemic

Qantas plans to cut at least 6,000 jobs and keep 15,000 more workers on extended furloughs as Australia's largest airline tries to survive the coronavirus pandemic. Qantas announced a plan Thursday to reduce costs by billions of dollars and raise fresh capital, the AP reports. The plan includes grounding 100 planes for a year or more and immediately retiring its six remaining Boeing 747 planes. Chief Executive Alan Joyce said the airline has to become smaller as it braces for several years of much lower revenues. He said the furloughed workers faced a long interruption to their airline careers.

"The actions that we’re taking will have a huge impact on thousands of our people. This is something that weighs very heavily on all of us," Joyce told reporters. "This is something that we don’t make a decision on very easily. But the collapse of billions of dollars in revenue leaves us with little choice if we are to save as many jobs as possible longer term." Qantas employs about 29,000 people. Joyce said he expected only about 8,000 of them would be working by next month, and 15,000 by the end of the year. He said that as international routes opened back up over the next two years, he hoped the workforce would increase again to 21,000.

(More Qantas stories.)