Canadian Airlines Layoff Across the Board

I was hoping that it would be not come to this. But airline layoffs are real. Personally, I really thought that there would be more “leave without pay”, so that they can retain their employees and slowly bring them back. But maybe there is more to the story if they want to cut their ties. I guess they can always hire them back later?

Anyway, here’s the current count to date. May airlines are careful to say that these are temporary layoffs, so the door is open for people to come back.

• 6,900 workers laid off at WestJet out of 14,000 employees. However, 90% of the laid off workers will be leaving voluntarily.
• 5,100 workers laid off at Air Canada out of 30,000 employees worldwide, while 600 pilots go into furlough.
• 3,600 workers laid off at Air Transat which represents about 70% of its staff.
• 470 pilots laid off at Sunwing and all flights temporarily halted
• Undisclosed number of layoffs by Porter airlines, and temporarily suspending all of its service.
• There seems to be little news about the smaller airlines such as: Flair Airlines, Air North.

There is no telling how much worse this is going to get before it gets better. Will be following this news closely as I do hope that we see as many airlines as possible survive this crisis. Alternatively, before they go bankrupt, I do hope to see some mergers.

I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t mind seeing 3-4 stronger airlines emerge from this (due to mergers and acquisitions) rather than so many smaller airlines trying to compete with only 1-2 bigger airlines.

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