Hong Kong Airlines will cut 250 flight attendants in the latest round of coronavirus-related redundancies to hit the carrier and the local aviation sector.
As a member of the cash-strapped Chinese aviation conglomerate HNA Group, the city’s third largest carrier had already axed jobs at the start of the Covid-19 crisis, far earlier than other airlines, and made steep pay cuts to keep salary costs in check.
Chris Birt, the airline’s director of service delivery, told staff in a memo on Friday that the company’s extended grounding of most planes and passenger flights had forced a rethink of its future staffing needs.
“These ongoing adjustments have not only drastically affected our revenue but also reduce our operating crew and staffing requirements in the foreseeable future,” the memo said.
“Following a review of our medium-term cabin crew requirements, we have made the very difficult decision to permanently reduce our cabin crew numbers.”
The airline’s redundancies followed major job cuts at Cathay Pacific Airways, which received a HK$39 billion bailout, and the closure of its rival Cathay Dragon.
Confirming the cuts, a Hong Kong Airlines spokeswoman said: “The compensation package offered to all affected cabin crew will be in full compliance with the employee’s conditions of service and local labour laws.”
The number of flight attendants employed by the airline would shrink to 1,000 after a 20 per cent reduction. Before the pandemic, the carrier employed 1,500 cabin crew.
In total, around 2,300 staff remain employed, down 34% from its peak.
Some 400 jobs across the company were previously cut in February and almost 170 of them were flight attendants.