Emirates airlines on Sunday announced the temporary suspension of all passenger flights by Wednesday, March 25, in response to the spreading coronavirus pandemic.
The airline said it maintained passenger flights to help travellers return home amidst the increasing number of travel bans, restrictions and country lockdowns across the world.
"Today we made the decision to temporarily suspend all passenger flights by 25 March 2020. SkyCargo operations will continue. This painful but pragmatic move will help Emirates Group preserve business viability and secure jobs worldwide, avoiding cuts," said airline on its website.
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Further, the airline announced it will effect basic salary reduction for the majority of employees for three months, ranging from 25 percent to 50 percent..
The salary cut is among a raft of measures put in place to contain costs that include, encouraging staff to take paid or unpaid leave.
On the decision to reduce basic salary, Sheikh Ahmed said: “Rather than ask employees to leave the business, we chose to implement a temporary basic salary cut as we want to protect our workforce and keep our talented and skilled people, as much as possible. We want to avoid cutting jobs. When demand picks up again, we also want to be able to quickly ramp up and resume services for our customers.
"The Emirates Group has strong liquidity, with a healthy cash position but it is prudent that it take steps to reduce costs at this time. Emirates remains committed to serving its markets and looks forward to resuming a normal flight schedule as soon as that is permitted by the relevant authorities."
"The Emirates Group has strong liquidity, with a healthy cash position but it is prudent that it take steps to reduce costs at this time. Emirates remains committed to serving its markets and looks forward to resuming a normal flight schedule as soon as that is permitted by the relevant authorities."
