Flydubai has asked staff furloughed during the Covid-19 pandemic last year to return to work starting in June amid optimism for a rebound in summer travel, its chief executive said.
“Last week we’ve written to all our staff and we’ve given them a schedule to start coming back from June onwards, [these are] all the people who were on unpaid leave,” Flydubai boss Ghaith Al Ghaith said in an interview with aviation consultant John Strickland as part of an online event organised by Arabian Travel Market on Tuesday. “That was a huge satisfaction from our side that we can bring back people.”
The Covid-19 pandemic hit the aviation industry hard, forcing airlines around the world to preserve cash by grounding aircraft and by laying off or furloughing employees.
Flydubai had offered its staff the option of either taking unpaid leave or a redundancy scheme. About 97 per cent of the employees given these choices opted for unpaid leave, Al Ghaith said
I understand part of it is because people have no other choice…but it was a commitment from the people that they wanted to stick with the airline and we stuck with them,” the chief executive said.
In its 2020 annual earnings report, flydubai said 1,092 employees went on unpaid or voluntary leave, from its current workforce of 3,796 workers. Its workforce shrank by 3.2 per cent in 2020, compared with the previous year, it said.
The state-owned airline also took measures to support staff on unpaid leave in co-ordination with regulatory authorities and partners, Mr Al Ghaith said. Flydubai worked with banks to provide relief to its affected employees by deferring loan payments.
“We tried to work out some of their problems because don’t forget, for a lot of people who work for us, the UAE is their second home,” he said. “The feedback we got during this terrible time of how people valued what we have done was so encouraging, that made us so proud that we can do even more, this is a very big exercise to build people’s loyalty to the brand.”
Looking ahead, Flydubai is upbeat about this year’s summer travel period. Prior to the current closure of India, Pakistan and Nepal, the airline had reached more than 65 per cent of its pre-crisis capacity, Mr Al Ghaith said said.
“We are very optimistic that with the summer coming up, things … will be even better,” Mr Al Ghaith said, noting this depends on other countries’ travel restrictions. “The biggest question will be which countries will be open. We are open here and ready for business in the UAE and the airline is ready.”