Scandinavia’s SAS cuts 5,000 jobs

Bloomberg

Scandinavia’s biggest network airline, SAS AB, is eliminating as many as 5,000 jobs, marking the first permanent staff cuts by a major European carrier in the face of collapsing travel demand.
The Stockholm-based company said that the dismissals, amounting to 40% of the workforce, are necessary because employees have an average notice period of six months and it needs to prepare for what may be years of sluggish demand.
The job cuts provide a taste of things to come at European airlines, which have suffered one of the biggest hits from the coronavirus pandemic, with 90% of capacity grounded. Government furlough programmes have generally avoided firings in the short-term, with thousands of workers laid off temporarily.
“It’s a painful message to give,” SAS Chief Executive Officer Rickard Gustafson said. “We are prepared to shift if demand returns more quickly and pull back some of the announced cuts.”
SAS rival Norwegian Air Shuttle ASA said it had placed pilot and cabin-crew companies in Denmark and Sweden into bankruptcy protection, saying it was unable to
pay salaries with its fleet grounded. The move will affect about 1,500 pilots and more than 3,000 cabin crew at the carrier, which said it has revised a debt plan presented only this week.
Furlough programmes have affected tens of thousands of airline employees across
Europe, with British Airways alone sending home 30,000 employees after grounding almost all of its passenger planes.
SAS, which had already laid off 90% of employees, will split the permanent job cuts across its three home nations, with about 1,900 posts going in Sweden, 1,700 in Denmark and 1,300 in Norway.