Australian airline Qantas will cut 1,400 of its 35,000-strong workforce by June after blaming the worsening deadly pneumonia epidemic today for scaring off passengers already spooked by the war in Iraq.
The move comes on of top staff cuts announced less than two weeks ago, when Australia's flag carrier said it would force employees to take leave to slash the equivalent of 3,000 full time jobs and admitted it would not meet full-year profit forecasts.
At the time, Qantas chief executive Mr Geoff Dixon cited the war in Iraq as the major reason for the airline's difficulties but he said Wednesday that Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) now posed a greater threat to passenger numbers.
"We're just seeing in the last 10 days that SARS really is, in this region, causing more problems than the war," Mr Dixon told reporters.
Criticising "hysteria" over the virus, Mr Dixon refused to rule out more redundancies if the crisis deepened.
"It seems to be a bigger issue than it probably should be," he said, adding that he would not hesitate to fly to the SARS hotspot of Hong Kong.
Mr Dixon said forward bookings to Hong Kong were down 25 per cent year-on-year, with Japan down 20 per cent, Europe down 15-17 per cent and Britain down 10 per cent.
He said in addition to the job cuts, Qantas had returned three leased aircraft to their owners, reducing international capacity by a further three-to-four per cent on top of the 20 per cent capacity cut announced last month.
The job restructuring will involve 1,000 redundancies and the elimination of another 400 permanent positions through attrition. A further 300 permanent positions are being converted to part-time employment.
AFP