EasyJet reduces fleet and cuts jobs in Switzerland 

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Easyjet Switzerland says it doesn’t expect a return to pre-Covid 19 business levels until 2023. Keystone / Georgios Kefalas

Faced with lower demand and with no recovery expected anytime soon, EasyJet Switzerland is withdrawing two of its 12 planes stationed in Basel. Seventy jobs will be lost.

Making the announcement on Tuesday, the airline company said it was consulting staff representatives on the fate of the jobs concerned.

“EasyJet Switzerland has so far managed to preserve jobs, but reducing the fleet forces us to adopt these painful measures,” director-general Jean-Marc Thévenaz told financial news service AWP. Short-time working had helped delay the cuts.

The airline employs 1,020 people in Switzerland, of whom 570 are Geneva and 450 in Basel.

EasyJet says it saw an encouraging return of demand at the beginning of the summer. However, the introduction of new measures to combat Covid-19, including quarantine requirements for some countries, slowed operations towards the end of summer and it does not expect business to return to pre-pandemic levels before 2023.

The airline sector has been hit particularly hard by Covid-19. The CEO of Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) said recently he expected the company to cut 1,000 jobs within two years.

About Swissinfo

SWI swissinfo.ch – the international service of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SBC). Since 1999, swissinfo.ch has fulfilled the federal government’s mandate to distribute information about Switzerland internationally, supplementing the online offerings of the radio and television stations of the SBC. Today, the international service is directed above all at an international audience interested in Switzerland, as well as at Swiss citizens living abroad.

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