The chief executive of Airbus has prepared a report about the impact of coronavirus on the planemaker company.
A letter was sent to the employees by Guillaume Faury in which he said that the company was “bleeding cash at an unprecedented speed.”
Just this month, the company said that it would be cutting aircraft production by a third and like any aviation industry during the outbreak, airbus also seems to be suffering.
Mr Faury also told Airbus’ 135,000 staff to brace for potentially deep job cuts and warned that its survival was at stake without immediate action.
The company is due to deliver financial results for the first quarter of the year this week and the position certainly does not look good.
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Greg Waldron, from the aviation industry news website FlightGlobal, highlighted the huge impact of coronavirus on Airbus and the sector as a whole, saying: “Every assumption we had about the industry has been totally upended. The outlook for Airbus has gone from very positive to very negative. There’s simply no demand for new aircraft at the moment.”
Right now, Airbus has around 13, 500 workers in the UK and most of them are making at its two major sites in Brighton, North Wales and Fulton, Bristol.
Even though Mr Waldon thinks that Airbus is handling the crisis fairly well, the company did not refrain from laying off a large chunk of employees.
“Airbus is a crucially important industrial programme for Europe, I think Europe will be committed to keeping Airbus going,” he said.
“However, there’s going to be a great deal of pain to go through. If they cut production rates quite significantly you’re going to see large numbers of layoffs. I would expect in a few years you’ll see a smaller leaner Airbus than what we have now.”
Airbus’ main rival Boeing is also struggling to deal with another crisis caused by the year-long grounding of its 737 Max Passenger jet.
On Saturday, the US aviation giant scrapped a $4.2bn (£3.4bn) tie-up with Brazil’s Embraer. Some industry analysts saw the move as being triggered by the crises, although the company cited contractual reasons for the decision.