British Airways Plc will cut 400 jobs by shutting its high street travel agent business and a call centre as it concentrates on online bookings, the airline said yesterday.
BA, Europe's third-largest airline, said it planned to close its Travel Shops business, which includes 17 high street shops, and its Belfast customer call centre under a restructuring of part of its UK direct sales operations.
The airline said 400 jobs would go under the revamp as the company seeks to cut €450 million ($786 million) in costs over the next two years to help combat soaring fuel prices.
It was the second time new chief executive Willie Walsh has announced plans to cut jobs since joining the airline last year. Unions expect more widespread job cuts ahead of BA's move into a new terminal at London's Heathrow airport in 2008.
BA said the changes would affect 300 staff at its Travel Shops business, its corporate travel agency Worldlink based at Heathrow, and its back office support areas. A further 100 staff currently work in the Belfast call centre. "Our high street Travel Shop business is forecast to make ever increasing losses in the years ahead despite continued efforts to reduce costs and improve revenue. We are therefore also proposing to close all 17 shops by the end of August," BA commercial director Martin George said in a statement.
l Cypriot carrier Helios Airways, afflicted by the worst aviation disaster in Europe last year, is to wind down as a scheduled airline and convert to a low-cost charter carrier with a new name.
Helios, a subsidiary of the Libra Holidays Group, will remain as a legal entity but without operations while it awaits the results of the crash in Greece last August, in which 121 people were killed.
