Asian men, wearing protective masks, walk past a billboard for Kuwait Airways in Kuwait City on … [+]
Kuwait Airways has emerged as the latest Gulf carrier to prepare for large-scale job cuts, as the region’s airlines continue to try and make sense of the economic damage being inflicted as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
Local media reports in Kuwait indicate that up to 1,500 foreign staff are to be laid off by the country’s national carrier, around 25% of the total. The cuts are happening against a backdrop of demands from MPs and others in the country that state-owned companies should dispense with international staff and hire more locals instead.
It adds to a steadily growing number of redundancies in the Gulf aviation sector. The region’s leading carrier, Dubai-based Emirates, is reported to be preparing to cut as many as 30,000 jobs, reducing its overall headcount by about 30%. Earlier this month rival airline Qatar Airways said it would have to make “a substantial number of jobs redundant.” Some reports have suggested the total job losses at the Doha-based airline could reach 10,000.
The third of the Gulf’s big-three airlines, Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Airways, is also said to have cut hundreds of jobs.
As is the case with airlines around the world, Gulf carriers find themselves with unsustainable business models as a result of the coronavirus crisis. Most airlines in the region have grounded the majority of their planes, offering a skeleton service of passenger repatriation flights alongside cargo-only services – the main exception to that has been Qatar Airways which has maintained a more extensive range of flights.
Airlines are slowly returning to the skies – domestic flights are due to restart in Saudi Arabia on Sunday – but there is great uncertainty about how willing passengers will be to start flying again. According to industry analysts, it is likely to be several years before passenger numbers return to their pre-coronavirus levels.
“Provided we find ways to control the virus, through testing, treatment or a vaccine, the industry should be back to pre-pandemic levels within two to three years,” said Professor Loizos Heracleous, an aviation industry expert at Warwick Business School in the UK.
The industry’s trade body, the International Air Transport Association (IATA), says governments across the Africa and Middle East region have to date offered a total of just $800m worth of aid to their airlines, equivalent to just 1.1% of total 2019 revenues. It has urged authorities to step up their assistance to the sector.
Far more jobs could be at risk in the absence of a rapid economic revival or more government help. IATA says Gulf airlines risk losing more than $19bn in revenue this year and more than 1 million jobs in or connected to the aviation sector in the region are at risk as a result of the downturn.
