Scandinavian airline SAS has announced it has started the
process to cut up to 5,000 full-time positions as part of a restructuring plan
to prepare for a slow post-coronavirus recovery.
Echoing a sentiment by IAG, which also announced up to
12,000 redundancies at British Airways yesterday, SAS said it believes “it will
take some years before demand returns” to pre-outbreak numbers. As a result,
the carrier is ‘adapting’ its business to an environment with lower passenger
demand and says it needs to reduce its future workforce.
SAS is currently only operating a limited domestic network in
Norway and Sweden and due to ongoing travel restrictions, it expects this lower
activity to continue through the crucial summer flying season.
According to the airline, its workforce has a notice period
with a mean of six months, making it necessary to start the redundancy process
now in order to give it “the flexibility to ramp up the business quickly if
demand returns, but also take further actions if recovery takes longer than
currently envisaged”.
The 5,000 job cuts will be split between 1,900 full-time
positions in Sweden, 1,300 in Norway and 1,700 in Denmark. SAS is engaging its
unions and other stakeholders to reduce the number of actual layoffs across the
group.
Rickard Gustafson, CEO of SAS, said: “Covid-19 has forced
SAS to face a new and unprecedented reality that will reverberate not only in
the coming months, but also during the coming years. Our ambition is to
continue to be the leading airline in Scandinavia and to have a leading role in
the Scandinavian infrastructure as a guarantor of national and international
connectivity.
“In order to continue this important societal function, we
need to adapt our cost base to the prevailing circumstances. Regretfully, we
are forced to adapt our workforce to lower passenger demand. Not least in view
of the company’s successful journey in recent years, which has been made
possible by the great work done by SAS’s competent and dedicated employees.”