Air Serbia offers a program of voluntary departure from the company with severance pay, in an attempt to reduce about 300 jobs due to the consequences of the pandemic, writes the portal ExYuAviation.
Employees were also informed that their salaries would decrease from December 2020 to March 2021. The amount of the reduction will depend on the pay grade of the employees.
The company informed its staff last week that it had cut costs over the past eight months to mitigate the effects of the pandemic, but was no longer able to cope with such high costs, resulting in voluntary redundancies and pay cuts.
Air Serbia suspended all new employments in March.
Over the past few months, Air Serbia has reduced the number of flights and negotiated the terms of the lease of its aircraft, where the lease costs are calculated on the basis of the number of hours of use of the aircraft, and not on the basis of a fixed rate.
The company reduced airport taxes at a selected number of destinations and managed to postpone tax payments for air navigation until 2021.
Back in March, it launched a program called “Deliver”, which aims to reduce capital investments and services that are not vital to the company.
Further, it used the suspension of slot rules in Europe and the United States, as well as in their primary markets, to secure the same slots for 2021.
The Serbian carrier has secured credit lines with commercial banks until December 31st and postponed deposit requests from several airports.
Air Serbia will receive state aid with the budget revision, and although the amount is not precisely shown in the budget, the Fiscal Council estimates that it will be around 150 million euros, which is approximately what is needed to cover the loans due to the company this and next year that the company will do in the conditions of a pandemic and an unprecedented crisis for air traffic.
The market situation remains volatile, as many travel restrictions continue to reduce demand. As a result, Air Serbia has halved the number of available routes, Nova Ekonomija reports.
