Airlines are having to find fresh ways to survive what could be a longer-than-expected collapse in flying.

IAG, the owner of British Airways, wants to raise 2.75 billion euros from shareholders.

Backed by its biggest shareholder Qatar Airways, the plan will boost the group's liquidity and see it through a period of anemic demand.

A tentative return to flying in Europe has been threatened by signs of rising infection numbers.

BA, which IAG counts on for over half of its annual profits, is only flying around 15% of its normal schedule.

The carrier has already warned it needs to cut 12,000 jobs and plans to change contracts for its remaining 30,000 staff.

That's provoked a furious reaction from cabin crew union Unite.

Airlines around the world have been brought to their knees by the abrupt halt to flying.

Forcing tens of thousands of redundancies.

The latest victim is KLM, the Dutch arm of Air France-KLM.

It said on Friday (July 31) it would shed 1,500 additional jobs.

That’s as part of a restructuring deal which requires it to cut emissions by 50% by 2030.

Parent company Air France-KLM on Thursday (July 30) reported a second-quarter operating loss of 1.55 billion euros, or $1.8 billion.

It said traffic was down 95% from a year earlier.

KLM said the new cuts would mean its workforce would be reduced by a fifth in all by 2022.

And it did not rule out further job losses.

While most of KLM's routes have been restored, it said last week it planned to operate about 13,000 flights in August.

That’s down 60% from a year ago.