British Airways drops routes to cut costs

In a bid to save money, British Airways has already implemented several cost cutting schemes such as stopping free meals on short haul flights, but now the airline is dropping seven routes and grounding 22 of its planes.

The airline has been hit hard by the downturn in air travel and has already cut 1,450 jobs since March. Currently, thousands of its employees are working at reduced rates with approximately 800 working for nothing for a month.

It what is normally the airline's busiest month, the company posted profits of 'only' £7 million. To combat these challenging times, BA chief Willie Walsh announced the dropping of several major routes and 22 747s and 757s - this totals 8,000 passenger seats being put out of service.

The routes were flights from Gatwick to New York, Barcelona, Alicante, Krakow, Madrid, Malta and Palma.

Quoted as saying there were "no visible signs of improvement" for the airline or the industry as a whole, British Airways have cut their capacity by 3.5 per cent summer with this increasing to 5 per cent in the winter.

Mr Walsh has previously been quoted as saying that BA is in a 'fight for survival' and the company is looking into every corner of the business to search for cost-cutting opportunities.

In comparison, Ryanair, Europe's biggest low-cost carrier, has added new routes having grown strongly in recent years.

 

Like this article? Get the RSS feed:

blog comments powered by Disqus