Qantas to shed 1750 staff

Qantas has announced that it is to shed some 500 management positions as the economic crisis bites hard into its bottom line.

The airline also announced it plans to also drop the equivalent of 1250 full time staff in an effort to stay aloft.

The announcement follows the company’s profit revision today which was reduced from circa $500 million to between $100 and $200 million.

In an ASX statement, Qantas CEO Alan Joyce said that the market conditions had deteriorated to the point where the capacity reductions were required to protect the long term viability of the airline.

“We want to avoid redundancies wherever possible, so we will be trying to use a range of workforce initiatives to manage the downturn such as, annual leave, long service leave, attrition, redeployment, leave without pay, promoting part time work and exploring job-sharing,” he said.

The move follows the announcement in March of 90 senior executive redundancies, which included the axing of its CIO Jamila Gordon, aimed at saving some $22 million.

As reported in ComputerWorld, Gordon was CIO at Qantas for only 18 months.

Qantas has also announced the grounding of the equivalent of 10 aircraft with a view to putting them up for sale, deferring its aircraft orders, and cutting $800 million in capital expenditure in 2009-2010 as cost saving measures.

Calls to Qantas were not returned, but ComputerWorld will follow the announcement and report its impact on IT staff at the airline.

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