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Emirates temporarily suspends passenger operations

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The Dubai-based Emirates will suspend all passenger flights by March 25 due to the coronavirus crisis, it announced on Sunday.


Emirates Group said in a statement Sunday that it will not cut jobs, but will implement a temporary reduction in basic salary for the majority of its employees for three months, ranging from 25% to 50%. Emirates is the world’s largest A380 operator, and the top-five largest airline in terms of passenger and freight ton-kilometers flown.


“As a global network airline, we find ourselves in a situation where we cannot viably operate passenger services until countries re-open their borders, and travel confidence returns,” Emirates Group chairman and CEO Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed al-Maktoum said in Sunday’s statement.


“By March 25, although we will still operate cargo flights which remain busy, Emirates will have temporarily suspended all its passenger operations. We continue to watch the situation closely, and as soon as things allow, we will reinstate our services.”



Cost-cutting measures being undertaken by the group beyond the salary cuts include postponing or canceling discretionary spending, freezing all non-essential recruitment and consultancy work, encouraging employees to take paid or unpaid leave, and a 100% basic salary cut for Emirates and airport services provider dnata’s presidents Tim Clark and Gary Chapman.



On the decision of the basic salary cuts, Sheikh Ahmed said, “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. 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.”


 


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