Cebu Pacific said it is laying off more than 800 employees by August as it does not expect recovery in the short term amid the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic.
The airline unit of the Gokongwei Group said the COVID-19 pandemic continued to negatively impact the global airline industry and recovery would likely take a long time.
“Over the past several weeks, CEB has had to review and redefine its long-term plans around the changing needs of customers, employees and the travel industry as a whole,” the local airline said.
“It was clear after this process that CEB was too big for the operational requirements and expected new norms in the industry,” it said.
Cebu Pacific said it was constrained to retrench more than 800 employees by August, a “difficult but necessary decision for CEB in order to fulfill its long-term commitment to provide affordable and accessible air transport services to the public.”
“Rest assured that this process was undertaken with utmost transparency, sensitivity and responsibility to all CEB stakeholders,” it said.
The budget airline earlier laid off 150 newly-hired cabin crew.
Cebu Pacific had 4,352 permanent full time employees as of end-2019. They included 3,499 employees in operations, 350 in commercial and 553 in support departments.
The airline reported a net loss of P1.18 billion in the first quarter, a reversal from the P3.35-billion net income it posted in the same period last year.
Revenue tumbled 25 percent in the first quarter to P15.91 billion from P21.77 billion a year ago following the cancellation of regional flights. Passenger revenues decreased 27.4 percent to P11.38 billion from P15.679 billion.
The group saw a 16.5-percent drop in passenger traffic from P5.3 million to 4.4 million, as flights decreased 14.7 percent and load factor declined 2.9 percentage points from 84.2 percent to 81.3 percent.
