Economic climate leading to job losses at airlines

Date: 9/10/2009

The economic decline that has characterised the past year will lead to more jobs being lost in the airline industry.

That is the opinion of Andrew Clarke, an advisor on air transport policy at the European Regions Airline association, who has said that the situation is the worst it has been for the last 60 years.

Commenting on the speed of the decline, Mr Clarke said: "At the beginning of 2008, most airlines were looking at a positive outlook for 2008.

"By this time last year, that had changed to a negative outlook for that year, followed by a further negative outlook for this current year."

He noted that although previous declines had been bad, such as that experienced after 9/11, they had not lasted too long and consequently job losses were minimal.

Both British Airways (BA) and Irish airline Aer Lingus (AL) have already announced that they will be cutting posts.

BA is expected to shed 1,700 positions while around 600 jobs will be lost at AL.