Emirates Airlines to suspend passenger operations from March 25

It is no more feasible to operate the flights

Emirates airline has announced to suspend its passenger operations from March 25.  The airline will continue to operate its cargo operations. The airline has announced to keep the employees but will cut salaries of most employees for three months. The cut in salaries is made to avoid the layoffs and retrenchments.

The majority of employees in Emirates Group will have a temporary reduction in salary for the next three months, ranging from 25% to 50%. Emirates said employees will continue to be paid their other allowances during this time. Junior level employees will be exempt from basic salary reduction. The airline revealed that Presidents of Emirates and Dnata – Sir Tim Clark and Gary Chapman – will take a 100% basic salary cut for three months

“Rather than ask employees to leave the business, we chose to implement a temporary basic salary cut as we want to protect our workforce and keep our talented and skilled people, as much as possible,” said Sheikh Ahmed. “We want to avoid cutting jobs. When demand picks up again, we also want to be able to quickly ramp up and resume services for our customers.”

The Emirates group’s arm Dnata (that provide airport services) will also significantly reduce its operations, including temporary closure of operations at some international locations where demand is low.

Emirates airline said that it is no more feasible to operate the flights as more countries have stopped flight operation. The airline said that it tried its best to keep the flight operations going to help the passengers to return home since the outbreak of Covid-19. But increasing number of countries have imposed travel bans, restrictions, and country lockdowns across the world which made it difficult to continue the operations.

The airline said its international air cargo links will remain in place, deploying its fleet of 11 Boeing 777 freighters for the transport of essential goods - including medical supplies - across the world.

 “The world has literally gone into quarantine due to the Covid-19 outbreak,” said Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, chairman and chief executive of Emirates Group. “This is an unprecedented crisis situation in terms of breadth and scale: geographically, as well as from a health, social, and economic standpoint. Until January 2020, the Emirates Group was doing well against our current financial year targets. But COVID-19 has brought all that to a sudden and painful halt over the past 6 weeks.”

He said, as a global airline, Emirates could not “viably operate passenger services until countries re-open their borders, and travel confidence returns”.

The Emirates Group said it has undertaken a series of measures to contain costs, including:

Postponing or cancelling discretionary expenditure

A freeze on all non-essential recruitment and consultancy work

Working with suppliers to find cost savings and efficiency

Encouraging employees to take paid or unpaid leave in light of reduced flying capacity