Airports group warns almost 900 jobs at risk as passenger confidence plummets

Manchester Airport

Manchester Airports Group (MAG) has warned that nearly 900 jobs could be lost due to depressed travel levels.

The business announced today that 465 jobs at Manchester Airport are at risk, as well as 376 roles at the group’s London Stansted Airport and a further 51 at its East Midlands operations.

It blamed a fall in passenger confidence in the travel industry due to a recent spike in coronavirus figures, “an absence of support for the sector” and a lack of testing for UK passengers.

Bosses fear the travel industry may not return to anything approaching normal until at least 2023/24.

MAG chief executive, Charlie Cornish, said: “By now, we would have hoped to see a strong and sustained recovery in demand.

“Unfortunately, the resurgence of the virus across Europe and the reintroduction of travel restrictions have meant this has not happened.

“With uncertainty about when a vaccine will be widely available, we need to be realistic about when demand is likely to recover.

“The end of the Job Retention Scheme means that we have to consider the number of roles that we can sustain at our airports.

“We will be discussing these issues with our trade unions, and consulting them fully on a range of options for reducing the size and overall cost of our workforce.

“We want to work with them to make sure we minimise the impact on our people as much as we can.”

He added: “I want to thank everyone across MAG for the dedication they have shown through the toughest Summer our industry has ever seen.

“MAG and other UK airports remain fundamentally strong businesses that will play an important role in driving the country’s recovery, but the specific and short term pressures of the pandemic are exceptional and particularly challenging for our sector.

“We are proud of our long-standing role in supporting communities around our airports and underpinning the employment of more than 130,000 people across the UK.

“We will continue to work to protect as many jobs as possible, maintain dialogue with our trade unions, and continue to make the case to government for the direct support that UK aviation needs.”

Unite the Union has blamed a lack of support from the Government for the industry’s plight.

Unite said it will immediately begin negotiating with Manchester airport and will seek to mitigate job losses, pressing the company to utilise the Government’s new job support scheme to save jobs and attempt to ensure that redundancies are voluntary rather than compulsory.

Regional co-ordinating officer, Lawrence Chapple-Gill, said: “This announcement will come as a bitter blow to the hard working staff at Manchester Airport.

“They and their families now face a very difficult and unsettling time, but Unite will support them every step of the way.

“Unite will do everything it can to reduce job losses and seek to ensure that any eventual redundancies are voluntary and not compulsory in nature.

“These job losses are an inevitable consequence of the Government’s failure to provide sector specific support to the aviation industry, the sector which has been most heavily affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Once COVID-19 is under control, confidence will return to the industry and flights will increase.

“It is a total failure of government to not be assisting the industry and its workforce through this crisis in order to ensure it can quickly recover when the virus abates.

“The chancellor first promised sector support in March. An aviation recovery plan was promised last month. Nothing has materialised and job losses are increasing by the day.”

In August Manchester Airport announced that it would close its Terminal Two building indefinitely, from September 2, due to low passenger numbers.

The airport originally closed Terminals Two and Three on March 25, after most airlines grounded their fleets due to the coronavirus lockdown, and many countries closed their borders to travellers.

Terminal Three reopened to passengers on July 1, and Terminal Two was reopened on July 15.

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