'We are still fighting for our survival', British Airways boss says amid decline in travel

Going nowhere: British Airways has parked its entire fleet of Airbus A380 jets
Going nowhere: British Airways has parked its entire fleet of Airbus A380 jets

The chief executive of British Airways has told MPs: “We’re still fighting for our own survival.”

Speaking to the Transport Select Committee, Alex Cruz said: “Last week we flew 187,000 passengers. The same week in the previous year we flew almost a million.

“We remain worried about the virus in the winter season. People are still afraid of travelling. We are having weekly changes to the quarantine list.

“All the data that we get are still pointing at a slow recovery process.”

He said BA is burning through £20m in cash per day, and that he has taken a one-third pay cut.

British Airways has parked its entire fleet of Airbus A380 jets and is scrapping its Boeing 747 “Jumbo jet” fleet.

Mr Cruz criticised the government’s policy of announcing new candidates for quarantine each Thursday, saying: "The weekly [quarantine] announcement is incredibly disruptive – primarily for our passengers.”

He called for “enhancing the current scheme to make it more consistent and deliver less change”.

“We need more regional considerations in order to fly to places where the rates of infection are lower than in the UK.”

British Airways is among the airlines who have called for a test-and-quarantine pilot scheme on the world’s leading intercontinental air link, between London and New York.

The government says it is looking at such an approach but has previously insisted that there is no viable alternative to 14 days of self-isolation.

“We need some testing regime that will minimise the quarantine process,” Mr Cruz said.

BA has shed around 12,000 of the 42,000 staff it had at the start of the coronavirus pandemic and renegotiated contracts with the remainder.

The chair of the Transport Select Committee, Huw Merriman, had previously branded British Airways “a national disgrace” for what he said it was a “fire and rehire” policy.

Mr Cruz praised the constructive and productive meetings with the British Airline Pilots’ Association (Balpa) over job losses.

But he said the other unions – Unite and the GMB – did not engage with British Airways.

The BA boss also revealed that it took four years for the airline industry to recover after the financial crisis of 2007-2008, and that premium traffic – in Club World and First Class – had never reached the previous levels.

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