Airbus has clarified it’s to lay-off 15,000 employees following comments in the German media by the company’s chief executive Guillaume Faury that is reducing production more than had originally been projected due to the COVID 19 pandemic.
In a statement Airbus said that it expected to lay-off around 15,000 positions no later than summer 2021, saying its commercial aircraft business activity has dropped by close to 40% in recent months.
The airframe maker went onto say that with air traffic not expected to recover to pre-COVID levels before 2023 and potentially as late as 2025, the firm now needed to take additional measures to reflect the post COVID-19 industry outlook.
Airbus said it expected to cut 5,000 positions in France, 5,100 in Germany, 900 in Spain, 1,700 in the UK, with another 1,300 jobs to go accross its global business.
“Airbus is facing the gravest crisis this industry has ever experienced,” said Airbus Faury. “The measures we have taken so far have enabled us to absorb the initial shock of this global pandemic. Now, we must ensure that we can sustain our enterprise and emerge from the crisis as a healthy, global aerospace leader, adjusting to the overwhelming challenges of our customers.
To confront that reality, we must now adopt more far-reaching measures. Our management team and our board of directors are fully committed to limiting the social impact of this adaptation.
We thank our governmental partners as they help us preserve our expertise and know-how as much as possible and have played an important role in limiting the social impact of this crisis in our industry. The Airbus teams and their skills and competences will enable us to pursue our ambition to pioneer a sustainable future for aerospace.”