The airline Ryanair is re-evaluating its operation in Portugal, admitting to moving forward with redundancies and with the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We announced a few weeks ago that we would have to reduce about 3,000 jobs of around about 15 to 16 thousand employees and some of them will probably be in Portugal, depending on the number of aircraft we have there [to operate]”, he says in an interview to Lusa agency the executive president of Ryanair, Eddie Wilson today.
On the day that the low-cost airline announces the resumption of its operations next July, after more than three months with the planes stopped due to the restrictions implemented by European countries to contain the covid-19 outbreak, the official stresses that the Ryanair is now “reevaluating its operations and talking to the unions” in Portugal.
“Our goal is to have agreements or a decision made soon,” says Eddie Wilson to Lusa, specifying that this decision will be released “in the coming weeks”.
Even so, according to the official, it is already certain that “what will determine this number [of dismissals] will be the total of aircraft based in Portugal”.
“For each aircraft that is removed, about 10 pilot jobs and approximately 20 jobs in the cabin crew are cut,” he explained.
Asked about which Portuguese bases will be most affected, Eddie Wilson indicates that the air carrier based in Dublin, Ireland, is “looking at everything”.
“We have a substantial operation in Porto, a relatively small operation in Ponta Delgada, we have resized the operation in Faro, and we operate in Lisbon”, she says, without elaborating.
Ryanair announced on April 1 of a simplified lay-off in Portugal , considering the use of the measure as indispensable for the preservation of jobs in the country, according to information transmitted at the time to the unions.
And that will happen as of July 1, as announced today by the carrier, indicating yet that the resumption is subject to lifting the travel restrictions applied to flights within the community.
“What will happen here is that we will have a lower demand and that is why we only resume with 40% of our capacity , which means we have fewer planes and fewer frequencies […] and, in these situations, we have to consider redundancies and cost cuts “, Eddie Wilson told Lusa.
Since the beginning of the travel limits, applied in mid-March, Ryanair has only made about 30 flights a day between Ireland, the United Kingdom and Europe..