British Airways ‘to suspend 36,000 staff days after grounding ALL flights to and from Gatwick’

British Airways will today suspend around 36,000 of its 45,000 staff as coronavirus left the airline on its knees.

The airline has reached a broad deal with the Unite union that will include the suspension of 80 per cent of its cabin crew, ground staff, engineers and those working at head office in Harmondsworth, near Heathrow.

The furloughed UK staff are expected to receive some of their wages through the government job retention scheme, which offers them 80 per cent of someone’s average pay up to £2,500-a-month. 

BA refused to comment today, only to say ‘talks are ongoing’, but a Unite spokesman said: “Unite has been working around the clock to protect thousands of jobs and to ensure the UK comes out of this unprecedented crisis with a viable aviation sector’, adding: ‘Members are very anxious at this time’. 

The 36,000 job cuts came after BA axed all its flights to and from Gatwick Airport and London City – with BA only expected to keep flying from Heathrow Terminal 5 with a severely reduced schedule.  

BA is owned by Madrid-based, International Airlines Group, whose boss Willie Walsh saw his pay jump 5.5% to £3.2 million last year – despite tumbling profits – and stands to retire in June with millions due in share bonuses over the next four years.

It is not yet known if he, CEO of British Airways Alex Cruz or other bosses will forgo any of their pay or bonuses as tens of thousands of staff face an uncertain future. 

As BA edged towards a total shut down, it has also emerged:

• Boris Johnson is under growing pressure to show leadership over Britain’s testing fiasco as coronavirus deaths surge by 563 to 2,352;
• Just 2,000 of the NHS’ 500,000 staff have been tested as a fifth medic working on the frontline is killed by the virus;
• UK banks in the firing line as they ‘unfairly refuse’ rescue loans for coronavirus-hit firms;
• Six-week-old US baby dies after being rushed to hospital – as America’s death toll rises above 5,000 – as White House is told China has covered up true scale of deaths there;
• Morgue the size of two football pitches is being built in east London to hold thousands of victims from NHS Nightingale, which opens this week; 

BA has cancelled thousands of flights and has been inundated with refund requests – but they are taking two weeks or more to process, sparking fury among customers.

One tweeted today: ‘Their customer service is non existent and are trying to hold onto the money that their customers work so hard for! This is a global pandemic that is affecting everyone. It’s been 3 weeks. That’s 21 days. I am in need of a refund not a voucher for another flight’.   

Rebecca Eichler also took to social media and said: ‘My flight was cancelled and you have offered a full refund, which is only available by calling, but you are not accepting calls’.

BA is also among the airlines helping repatriate Britons stuck abroad following Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab’s pledge to set aside £75 million to help get people home. 

The decision by BA to shut its Gatwick operation came hours after easyJet grounded its entire fleet of 330 aircraft and became the first UK airline to stop all its operations. 

On Wednesday, Gatwick’s North Terminal shut with the South Terminal operating from 2pm and 10pm to cut costs, meaning most of the airport’s staff will be furloughed. 

Those not furloughed, such as call centre staff and those involved in live operations, will remain on full pay following the talks. 

A source told The Sun: ‘Negotiations have been tough but there is an acknowledgement at BA and the union that these are unprecedented times.’ 

The agreement has yet to be fully signed off but it is thought this will happen early on Thursday morning. A spokesman for the airline told MailOnline: ‘Talks continue.’

With future bookings cancelled for the time being, airlines such as British Airways have been losing vast sums of money. 

A British Airways spokesman declined to say how many of its workers’ jobs are under threat when asked earlier this week, but said: ‘Due to the considerable restrictions and challenging market environment, like many other airlines we will temporarily suspend our flying schedule at Gatwick. We are contacting affected customers to discuss their options.’

Two weeks ago British Airways admitted coronavirus is threatening its very survival as staff were told there will be job cuts and aircrafts must be mothballed because of the ‘worsening’ worldwide pandemic.

Chief Executive Alex Cruz  wrote to all 45,000 workers saying the virus’ relentless spread is a crisis ‘of global proportions like no other we have known’, more serious than the 2008 financial crash, SARS or 9/11.

But chief executive of its parent company IAG, Willie Walsh, has also stressed that he had not requested a government bail-out and insisted IAG was ‘resilient with a strong balance sheet’, adding there is ‘no guarantee that many European airlines would survive’.

BA is one of many that are to stop serving the UK’s second busiest airport due to the collapse in demand caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

The airline will keep equipment for essential functions at the airport, such as maintenance, towing and cleaning, to enable it to restart operations quickly.

Just 33 flights were due to take off or land at the West Sussex airport on Tuesday, according to aviation data provider FlightStats.

From Wednesday, Gatwick’s runway was only open for scheduled flights between 2pm and 10pm.

The airport also closed one of its two terminals.

The measures will be in place for a minimum of one month.

Airports are responding to the decision by airlines to suspend the majority of their flights due to demand plummeting and countries around the world introducing travel restrictions in a bid to slow the spread of coronavirus.

London City Airport closed its runway to all commercial and private flights last week while Southend Airport is only open on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays between 4.30pm and 9.30pm. 

IAG recently announced three-quarters of flights will be cut over the next two months also said it was ‘taking actions to reduce operating expenses and improve cash flow’.

These include temporarily suspending employment contracts, reducing working hours and offering staff unpaid leave.

The group, which also owns Iberia and Vueling, employs 66,000 staff.

Airlines are in the process of temporarily laying off tens of thousands of staff without pay.

Amid warnings of an industry collapse within weeks, BA-owner IAG, EasyJet, Ryanair and Norwegian all revealed drastic plans to slash costs and ground flights.

Virgin Atlantic said staff had agreed to take eight weeks of unpaid leave over the next three months, with the salary docked from workers’ pay over six months so their income does not dry up.

All 10,000 employees of the company, founded and controlled by Richard Branson, will also be offered voluntary redundancy. 

In a sign of the scale of the coronavirus crisis, the airlines have been backed by the union Unite and pilots association Balpa. 

The most extreme measures were taken by Norwegian, which is the third largest airline at Gatwick. It is temporarily laying off around 7,300 staff – 90 per cent of its workforce.

The airline which is saddled with debt, has lost more than 80 per cent of its market value since the start of the year. 

EasyJet’s founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou yesterday justified the decision to pay a £174million dividend to shareholders including around £60million to his family just ten days before it grounded all its 330 planes.

The Luton-based airline employs 9,000 staff and is the first in the UK to stop all flights and mothball all jets since the coronavirus pandemic took hold in Britain.

Sir Stelios said the now-controversial dividends were agreed in February when ‘the world looked like a much happier place’ and the cash was ‘automatically’ paid to shareholders on March 20 and were ‘impossible to stop’.

In an extraordinary statement the billionaire also said calls for him to give the money back were ‘naïve’ and ‘malicious’, adding easyJet ‘is not a charity’. 

The grounding of easyJet’s gigantic fleet came just days after calling for a state loan to help them survive.

Justifying the £170million payout Sir Stelios, who with his siblings are the largest single shareholders in the carrier with a 34 per cent stake, insisted that the dividends were ‘legal’ and ‘rightful’.  

He said: ‘The reality of the situation is the dividend was legally at the point of no return on the 6th of February, or at the very latest on the 27th of February 2020. The world looked like a much happier place on the 6th of February and the dividend was rightfully paid to all shareholders’. 

In a lengthy statement he said the payments could not have been stopped.

He said: ‘The dividends by the 20th of March we already paid automatically via a complex web of bank accounts where the shares are held and it is impossible to stop it for some shareholders but not for others’.

Sir Stelios is threatening to seek the removal of board members unless the airline withdraws from a contract with Airbus to provide 107 aircraft which he said will cost £4.5 billion. 

In his statement earlier this week he said journalists who asked whether he would hand his dividend back were ‘naïve/malicious’, adding: ‘I am perplexed as to how that would work?’, adding: ‘To be used how? To pay that money straight over to Airbus? And what is the consideration for such a gift? Or is it meant as a selfless charitable donation? Charity towards which deserving cause exactly? easyJet is not a registered charity to receive donations and neither is Airbus. That’s not how publically listed companies work’. 

EasyJet grounded its entire fleet of 330-plus planes as coronavirus continued to wound Britain’s airlines.   

The airline serves 159 airports and 1,051 routes, has 9,000 UK-based staff including 4,000 cabin crew. 

The company has worked with union Unite to agree two-month furlough arrangements for cabin crew which means that crew will be paid 80 per cent of their average pay up to £2,500-a-month through the Government job retention scheme.  

Virgin Atlantic will ask the British government for a package of commercial loans and guarantees worth hundreds of millions of pounds, the Financial Times reported.

Other carriers including airlines such as Loganair and Eastern Airways, and Norwegian Air Shuttle are also considering to ask for state aid, the newspaper added.

But British ministers want bigger airlines with wealthy shareholders will weather the storm without the need for billions in taxpayer cash. 

The Luton-based carrier said the measure ‘removes significant cost’ as the aviation industry struggles to cope with a collapse in demand caused by the outbreak of the virus. 

British Airways and other airlines have been helping repatriate Britons from abroad.

Relieved passengers burst into applause after a British Airways repatriation flight from Peru landed at Gatwick on Tuesday morning – but travellers claim they were ‘left in the dark’ by the Foreign Office over whether to self-isolate or not.

The flight was one of two BA flights that took off from Lima on Monday evening and arrived safely in the UK on Tuesday morning.

Footage posted on social media showed the appreciation of stranded Brits who started clapping as they landed back on UK soil. 

Tens of thousands of Britons are still stuck all over the world due to the coronavirus lockdown in countries such as  India, Thailand, the Philippines and New Zealand.

It prompted Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab to announce yesterday that £75 million would be set aside to charter flights to bring stranded Britons home from areas where commercial routes were no longer running. 

‘It feels weird, I burst into tears when I walked through – we’ve been trying to get home for so long,’ said Alice Nuttall, 21, from Nantwich.

‘We’re assuming, because we had to fill in our contact information on this form… that we’ll get contacted regarding [coronavirus].’

‘We’ve been told we need to pay £250 for the repatriation flight by the Government.’

‘They haven’t really advised us on anything else, we haven’t been screened or anything,’ added her friend Ellie Durrant, 22.

Ms Nuttall’s father John Nuttall, 56, said that the women and their families would be taking ‘sensible’ steps following guidance from Public Health England.

‘They’ll self-isolate for 14 days and obviously follow the rest of the Government advice,’ he said.

Relatives gathered at international arrivals in the terminal building, maintaining a two-metre distance, but many embraced their loved ones as they came through the gate.

Other travellers expressed disappointment at being forced to come home early and said that they had not been given any clear instructions or extra precautions after arriving back in the UK.

‘It’s a bit strange to be home – I was expecting to be travelling for another two-and-a-half months,’ said Anna-Lucia Strike, 18, from Chiswick in west London.

‘I haven’t been told anything about what I should do now. I know the rules that are here in the UK but apart from that we haven’t been told anything extra.’

‘We’ve been pretty left in the dark,’ said Drew Jones, 27, from Essex.

‘We’re going straight into isolation I think, don’t really have much to do at home or at work… totally mixed emotions.’

Kate Harrisson, British Ambassador to Peru, said: ‘With the departure of 2 more BA planes today (5 since Wednesday) we have enabled the evacuation of over 1000 British nationals, around 160 Irish nationals and a range of EU nationals in less than a week.

‘I want to thank my team for making this possible. A more than stellar effort.’

I’ve been furloughed: What does it mean, why are companies doing this and what happens next?

Until a fortnight ago, it’s unlikely many British workers had ever encountered the term ‘furloughed’, but now it is a concept that has been thrust into the spotlight by the coronavirus crisis.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak has unveiled a series of measures to cover the wages of millions of people suddenly left without work and prevent businesses going bankrupt due to the coronavirus crisis – and furloughing staff lays at the heart of it.

The so-called coronavirus job retention scheme enables businesses to continue paying part of their employees’ salary who would otherwise have been laid off because of the crisis. 

Sunak said the Government will cover 80 per cent of salaries up to a ceiling of £2,500 a month – equivalent to the UK average wage of £30,000 a year.

The scheme, open to all firms with employees, will be up and running by the end of April and backdated to March 1. 

But in order to access it, businesses will have to ‘furlough’ their employees who they can no longer afford to pay. 

This term, until now more or less unknown in the UK, is suddenly popping up everywhere, with easyJet just one among the many companies announcing a two-month furlough for its cabin crew who can’t work after the company grounded all of its flights.

Here we explain what furlough means and what it entails for workers and businesses. 

What does it mean to be ‘furloughed’? 

Essentially, if you’re being furloughed by your employer, it means you’re being sent home, but will still receive 80 per cent of your salary by the Government, up to a maximum of £2,500 a month.

This Government job retention scheme is only for employed people, it does not apply if you are self-employed.  

However, you first need to agree to be put on furlough by your employer, who can then apply for the money to the Government. You cannot apply for it yourself.

Your employer can choose to pay the remaining 20 per cent of your wages, although it is not obliged to do so. 

If you earn more than £2,500 a month, your employer can choose to ‘top up’ your salary, but again it is not forced to do so. 

You will still continue to pay income tax and national insurance contributions while on furlough.  

Can I be furloughed if I’m on a zero-hour contract? 

Yes. Also if you’re on a flexible contract or are employed by an agency.

If you are on a zero-hour contract, which means you don’t necessarily earn the same amount each month, your employer should give you the 80 per cent of your average monthly salary since you started working.

That also applies to workers who have been employed for less than a year.

If you’ve worked for your employer for a year or more, you should receive 80 per cent of your average monthly salary, or 80 per cent of what you earned in the same month during the previous year – whichever is highest.

If you started work only in February, your employer will pro-rata your earnings from that month. But if you’ve started working on 28 February or after, you are not eligible. 

If you have been made redundant after February 28, or even if you left a job after that date, you could be reemployed under furlough if your employer is willing to do so.  Otherwise you will have to claim unemployment.  

Can I be forloughed if I’m sick? 

If you’re fallen ill and in the meantime your employer has had to shut down, you should first get statutory sick pay first, but can be furloughed after this. 

Those who are self-isolating because of coronavirus can also be placed on furlough. 

People who are ‘shielding’ and are vulnerable to potential severe illness caused by the coronavirus, can also be placed on furlough. 

At the moment, employees can be furloughed from a minimum of three weeks up to three months, although the Government may look to extend that if needed. 

Which businesses can apply?

Any company with employees can apply, including charities, recruitment agencies and public authorities.  

However, the Government does not expect many public sector organisations to apply, as ‘the majority of public sector employees are continuing to provide essential public services or contribute to the response to the coronavirus outbreak’.  

Organisations who are receiving public funding specifically to provide services necessary to respond to the coronavirus outbreak are not expected to furlough staff. 

Employers can furlough staff for a minimum of three weeks and are not allowed to rotate employees on furlough. 

In order to access the scheme, businesses need to change the status of their employees to furlough workers and submit the information to HMRC.  

HMRC are currently working to set up a system for reimbursing companies. 

 

Families slam travel firms as they battle to get their money back for Easter holidays cancelled due to coronavirus while tourism bosses urge government to axe refund rules or risk ‘catastrophic damage’ to industry

By James Robinson for MailOnline 

Out-of-pocket holidaymakers have taken to social media in outrage after struggling to get refunds from two of Britain’s biggest airlines.

Passengers of BA and Easyjet say they have been frustrated in their attempts to recoup the costs of their flights after the two airlines made a raft of cancellations this week due to the impact of coronavirus.

One passenger claims to have made more than 100 phone calls to Easyjet, who on Monday announced it was grounding its entire fleet.

Another claims to have waited four hours on hold to the budget airline.

One Twitter user described their attempts to get a refund as like ‘hitting a brick wall’, while a passenger of BA, which has suspended all flights from Gatwick airport, described the offer of a voucher as ‘utterly unacceptable’.

But the raft of complaints come as travel industry chiefs urge the government to suspend refund rules or face ‘catastrophic damage to the UK travel industry’.

Travel industry body, the Association of British Travel Agents (Abta), say the coronavirus pandemic has caused a ‘financial strain’ on tour operators and travel agents, which they say is ‘unmanageable in the short term’. 

Under current legislation, tour operators are required to refund customers within 14 days.

But Abta’s chief executive, Mark Tanzer, says firms should be allowed four months to process payments and is calling on the government to make changes.

Speaking to the Guardian, he said: ‘These businesses are themselves waiting for refunds from hotels and airlines and, without this money, they simply do not have the cash to provide refunds to customers.

‘We want to avoid the scenario of normally successful travel businesses employing tens of thousands of people facing bankruptcy.’

Meanwhile, frustrated holidaymakers say they are struggling to obtain refunds from budget airline Easyjet.

The Luton-based firm grounded its entire fleet of aircraft on Monday due to coronavirus, which has killed more than 1,700 people and infected more than 24,000 in the UK.

The airline has not given a date for when it will resume flights.

Following the announcement, passengers took to the website and phones in an attempt to obtain a refund, sparking an array of complaints from those who have so far been unsuccessful.

One Twitter user, Donna Short, said: ‘Getting frustrated by Easyjet now.

‘I know the lines are busy but every time I get through the voice says ‘to save you waiting in the queue please call back later’ and cuts you off.’

Another said: ‘Come on Easyjet, you know you are better than this.

‘Make it easier for people to obtain their refund and you will reap the benefit when this is over.

She added: ‘Do the right thing.’ 

British Airways, which suspended all flights to and from London’s Gatwick airport amid a collapse in demand due to the coronavirus this week, was also caught in the Twitter storm.

Helen Georgiou said: ‘I had two flights cancelled.

‘I had heard nothing back from BA with regards to a refund.

‘I had to follow-up with a complaint to receive a response a week later, to one case, to be told they will issue a travel voucher and not a refund.’

Another said: ‘BA has given me the option to reschedule my trip, which I’m not feeling at the moment.

‘Can they cancel it and refund my money? I’m too upset to pick another date.’

BA says customers with cancelled flights can chose a new flight date, take a voucher or ask for a refund.

But the company said it is facing ‘unprecedented challenges’ with regards to the number of requests.

In a statement, an Easyjet spokesperson said: ‘Customers on cancelled flights can transfer to an alternative flight free of charge or receive a voucher for the value of their booking online or claim a refund through our contact centre.

‘We are experiencing higher than average wait times so we would thank customers for their patience and assure them that these entitlements will be available long after their cancelled flight has flown.

‘For customers whose flights are not cancelled but would like to move to a later date they can amend their flight online with no change fee and we have brought forward our winter schedule on-sale so customers have more choice to move their flights, up to 28 February 2021.’