Air Canada to lay off up to 60% employees due to Covid-19 pandemic

Canada’s largest airline said Friday it plans to lay off at least 20,000 employees because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Air Canada said the cuts affect more than half of the company’s 38,000 employees.

The airline said the pandemic has forced it to reduce scheduled flights by 95% and it doesn’t expect normal traffic to return anytime soon.

“We therefore took the extremely difficult decision today to significantly downsize our operation to align with forecasts, which regrettably means reducing our workforce by 50 to 60 per cent,” the airline said in a statement.