IAG announces up to 12,000 redundancies in wake of Covid-19 crisis

International Airlines Group announced thousands of redundancies in anticipation that the recovery in international air traffic might take several years.

"In light of the impact of Covid-19 on current operations and the expectation that the recovery of passenger demand to 2019 levels will take several years, British Airways is formally notifying its trade unions about a proposed restructuring and redundancy programme," IAG said in a statement.

The carrier added that it was likely that most British Airways' staff would be impacted, with as many as 12,000 at risk of being made redundant, although consultations with trade unions were ongoing.

In April, the company furloughed 22,626 staff under the aegis of the government's job retention scheme.

For the first quarter, IAG reported a loss before exceptional items of €535m, which was down from €135m of profits in the same period one year ago on the back of a 13% slide in revenues to €4.6bn.