British Airways pilots take pay cut over job losses row

Bloomberg

British Airways pilots accepted a pay cut of 20% in a deal to limit job losses, resolving a bitter dispute at the IAG SA unit as carriers seek to weather the global slump in air travel caused by the coronavirus.
Just over one-fifth of the 1,255 redundancies initially planned will now go ahead, and some of those may also be averted, the British Airline Pilots’ Association (Balpa) said in a statement. Under the terms of the agreement, pilots will accept the initial pay cut of 20%, which will taper to 8% over two years, and then be phased out entirely “over the longer term,” Balpa said.
Airlines have been battered by government restrictions brought in to contain the coronavirus. Carriers had been pinning their hopes on catching the tail-end of the profitable summer tourism season, but disruptions continue amid viral flare-ups in many countries, including France and Spain have led to new curbs on travel.
The industry pushed back its hopes of a rebound in traffic levels. A full recovery is unlikely before 2024, a year later than it recently predicted, the International Air Transport Association said. British Airways shared that bleak assessment, saying it does “not expect our company to return to 2019 levels of business until at least 2023.”
“Therefore we need to act now to reshape our company for a very different future,”
IAG said.
The premium markets on which IAG relies may be among the last to recover as economies stumble and people shun long-haul flights.
The company also hasn’t received the billions in aid pumped into rivals Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Air France-KLM, with help limited to furlough funds to protect jobs and state-backed loans.