The aviation industry’s SOS collective became louder on Thursday when United Airlines announced it would have to replace at least 2,850 pilots if federal aid designed to protect jobs expires in October.
In a memo to pilots, Bryan Quigley, senior vice president of the United States, pointed to a sharply reduced demand in travel as the reason United had to become “much less effective October 1”.
United remains optimistic that Congress will negotiate an expansion of the Payroll Support Program that will employ tens of thousands in the aviation industry, Quigley wrote, but added that it should also be ready for another outcome.
If the furloughs occur, the unpaid free time for some would begin in early October, with layoffs continuing through late November, the executive’s memo said.
The decision of United came in the same week that American Airlines predicted layoffs of 19,000 of its own workers in October, and Delta Air Lines told its pilots that nearly 2,000 of them would be fired.
The sector is trying to stay afloat amid catastrophic losses stemming from COVID-19, which have imposed an almost total shutdown on travel.
The major airlines warned weeks ago that they would have to remove more than 80,000 pilots, flight attendants and other aviation workers if $ 25 billion in government aid arrives by the end of September. The money, which covers wages, was first provided in March as part of a larger economic aid package and was intended to help carriers survive the pandemic until the public health crisis ended.
But because the deadly virus has continued its catastrophe, so is the decline of the sector. In addition to holidaymakers who are too cautious to travel far away for fear of contracting coronavirus, the major U.S. carriers have also lost money-generating business travelers to the pandemic.
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