CYPRUS Airways (CY) unions have been given a list of 135 employees facing the axe due to the downsizing of the airline’s fleet from November 1.
The redundancies cover all spectrums of the airline’s staff from pilots to catering employees and have not been well received by the unions, which are currently engaged in negotiations with CY management on the future of the company, based on a drastic strategic plan that foresees a total of 400 redundancies.
Costas Demetriou, head of the airline’s biggest union CYNIKA, told the Cyprus Mail yesterday from London that they had sent a letter to the board concerning the first round of redundancies resulting from the offloading in November of two Airbus A320s from the CY fleet.
“We told them we are not entering into a dialogue with them without them first having organised the managerial staff and reaching a decision on Hellas Jet,” said Demetriou, referring to CY’s Athens-based carrier, which has been losing £1 million a month since it was created in June 2003.
The dire performance of Hellas Jet was considered the chief cause of CY’s first-half pre-tax losses of £30 million, announced late last month. Unless CY can initiate a turnaround in the next few months, the airline will have run out of cash by November and fold by the end of the year, the government has repeatedly warned.
Downsizing the fleet is the first step the airline is taking to carry out the suggestions in the recovery plan, but the loss of two planes will have a knock-on effect on staff levels.
Sources told the Cyprus Mail that the list of 135 did not contain names, only particular posts and departments.
According to reports, of the 135 redundancies, 14 would be pilots, six chief and four senior stewards plus another 14 cabin staff. The list suggested that 10 permanent employees be made redundant from the accounts department and 12 from the maintenance department. Customer services could be reduced by 23 people in various CY offices around the island, and another six would be cut from sales, and 13 from the catering division.
Fleet reduction will also lead to the axing of three destinations and the cutting back on flights to four others. Flights to Warsaw, Budapest and Birmingham are to be stopped completely and those to Jeddah and Riyadh are under review. As part of the new plan, which will come into effect on November 1, flights to Frankfurt, Milan, Amman and Damascus are expected to be reduced.
