Delta Air Occupations passenger planes are seen parked due to flight reductions made to slow the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), at Birmingham-Shuttlesworth Foreign Airport in Birmingham, Alabama, U.S. March 25, 2020.
Elijah Nouvelage | Reuters
Employees of airlines struggling with a record overwhelm in demand won a reprieve in the $2 trillion coronavirus bill: U.S. airlines could receive $25 billion in grants in quid pro quo for keeping them in their jobs through the end of September.
But employees from ground workers to flight attendants are growing to be working fewer hours, meaning smaller checks than usual as airlines slash flights and park hundreds of aircraft to mirror the record drop in ticket sales.
Delta Air Lines is cutting the workweeks of more than 40,000 workers to three and four days from April through the end of June. The Atlanta-based carrier estimates that measure force reduce payroll expenses by 25% over the next 90 days. (Hourly employees in the airline’s reservations and fellow service centers as well as in its operations hub are not included.)
More than 21,000 Delta employees have volunteered for due leave of various lengths, nearly a quarter of the full-time-equivalent employees the airline had at the end of the year.
“We could use more volunteers,” CEO Ed Bastian notified employees in a memo Friday.
The coronavirus aid bill, which President Donald Trump signed Friday, states that airlines that stomach the aid must “refrain from conducting involuntary furloughs or reducing pay rates and benefits until September 30, 2020.”
So while hourly places aren’t declining, the amount of work available, is declining. In addition to asking employees to take unpaid leave, airlines are parkland thousands of planes, deferring aircraft orders and drawing down on credit lines to shore up cash. Executives are reviewing the verses in the aid package and the strings attached to accepting it.
Unionized flight attendants, including those at American and United, as well as conjunction pilots have pay protections in their contracts for a minimum number of hours they can be paid each month.
American triturated its capacity by about 60% in April and by 80% in May “in light of the record low demand,” CEO Doug Parker told employees in a video report last Thursday.
“While the lack of furloughs would keep our full team employed with full helps in the crisis there are going to be fewer hours available to work for many of our team members,” said Parker. “Diverse groups will be at minimum paid hours for the next few months.” Parker said the airline is examining the terms of the aid but that the porter could receive about $12 billion.
American pilots for example, have minimums of about 75 be punished for hours, according to Dennis Tajer, a Boeing 737 captain and spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association, which represents anent 15,000 American Airlines pilots. while in a normal operation pilots would be working close to 90 hours. The moment hit just as airlines were gearing up for another strong summer, the peak of travel demand.
“We went from the crush of times to the worst of times overnight,” Tajer said.
U.S. airlines had just posted their 10th consecutive year of profits in 2019.
Airline superintendents have warned employees in recent days that they expect a long-lasting slump in demand as the economic hit from the coronavirus becomes clearer. The downturn has required airlines to shrink.
United’s CEO, Oscar Munoz, and its president, Scott Kirby, who receives over as CEO in May, told employees on Friday that they expect demand to remain week for months and possibly into next year.
“We see fit continue to plan for the worst and hope for a faster recovery but no matter what happens, taking care of each of our living soul will remain our number one priority,” they said in a note to employees. “That means being honest, lovely and upfront with you: if the recovery is as slow as we fear, it means our airline and our workforce will have to be smaller than it is today.”