DUBAI - Emirates will halt most passenger flights amid the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic as of Wednesday (25/3) while maintaining its cargo operations, the airline said in a statement on Sunday (22/3).
Although the Dubai-based airline initially stated that it would suspend all passenger flights, it later confirmed that it would continue operating passenger flights to Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Switzerland, Thailand, the UK, and the US following “requests from governments”.
“As a global network airline, we find ourselves in a situation where we cannot viably operate passenger services until countries re-open their borders, and travel confidence returns,” said Emirates Group CEO Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum in the statement.
“By Wednesday 25 March, although we will still operate cargo flights which remain busy, Emirates will have temporarily suspended most of its passenger operations.”
In addition, Emirates is also reducing operations of its airport services provider subsidiary Dnata and temporarily slashing most employees’ basic salaries by 25% to 50% for three months. Emirates President Tim Clark and Dnata President Gary Chapman have also said they will take a 100% basic salary cut for the same period.
“Rather than ask employees to leave the business, we chose to implement a temporary basic salary cut as we want to protect our workforce and keep our talented and skilled people, as much as possible,” said Sheikh Ahmed. (MS)