Over the next few weeks, Europe’s biggest airline, Ryanair will lay off 900 employees – with the total number of layoffs to reach 1,500, as another 600 layoffs are expected by summer 2020. The news was announced today by Ryanair CEO, Michael O’Leary in an internal video conference.
Ryanair CEO explained the layoffs are impacted by increased fuel prices, increased competition in the European market, Brexit along with higher pilot wages due to a re-negotiation of salaries and the grounding of Boeing 737 MAX airplanes; the aircraft has already been grounded for more than 140 days.
“Currently, 500 pilots and 400 cabin crew are made redundant,” O’Leary explained: “We will, however, limit the amount of forced redundancies.”
At the end of August the discount airline will make a decision on which bases to close, with the first layoffs to be announced and further announcements to come in September, October and December.
It was also announced today that O’Leary has signed a new 5-year contract as Ryanair CEO, however with a halved salary to be €500,000 per year and his annual bonus won’t exceed €500,000.