British Airways CityFlyer won’t make any cabin crew at its London City base redundant after implementing cost-cutting measures designed to save jobs. The wholly-owned subsidiary of British Airways which operates short-haul services using a fleet of Embraer regional jets will, however, continue with the closure of its Edinburgh crew base with the loss of some jobs.
At one point, the very future of CityFlyer looked in doubt as British Airways carried out a review of its entire operation and considered pulling out of both Gatwick Airport and London City altogether. Crew based in Edinburgh have been given the opportunity to transfer to London but those who rejected the relocation will be made involuntarily redundant.
Head of in-flight services, Jan Keeley told staffers in an internal memo that the airline had been forced to react in order to survive and the business would be smaller “going forward”. A high uptake of voluntary measures, including extended periods of unpaid leave had, however, removed the need for any redundancies at London City.
“I know for many of you this will be a very difficult time, only further compounded by the uncertainty of what is taking place within our business,” Keeley told cabin crew in the memo.
Talks on changes to terms and conditions continue with the Unite trade union.
CityFlyer had also warned of 72 potential pilot redundancies out of a total of 248 pilots working for the airline. The BALPA pilots union hit out at the British government for imposing travel restrictions that were “forcing airlines into a death spiral.”
Ministers have repeatedly rejected the idea of replacing draconian quarantine restrictions with COVID-19 testing for passengers, citing an outdated and inaccurate statistic that such tests would only pick up 7 per cent of positive cases.
