Emirates Suspends Passenger Flights, Informs Employees of Pay Cuts

emirates suspends all flights

UPDATE as of March 22, 2020 – 7:30pm Dubai Time: Just a recent update a few hours after we posted this article where ALL Emirates flights were supposed to be cancelled starting March 25, the airline company amended its statement following requests from governments and customers to help with the repatriation of travellers. So while most flights will still be suspended, there will be a selected few countries where Emirates will still operate until further notice. These countries include: the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Australia, South Africa, USA, and Canada.

Please be advised that this situation remains dynamic, and travellers can check flight status on emirates.com.

Please see their statement below on Twitter.

In a statement released by the leading airline company, Emirates has decided to temporarily suspend all their passenger flights starting 25th March 2020. This is a business response due to the effects to the travel industry brought about by the pandemic.

Their cargo operations (SkyCargo) will still continue to operate.

They have also announced salary cuts (20% to 50%) to their employees. Sir Tim Clark, President of Emirates, and Gary Chapman, President of dnata will take a 100% basic salary cut for three months.

Also Read: Dubai Banks to Offer Financial Relief to Customers and Companies

Emirates mentions that these decisions have been painful to the airlines, but is a practical move given the current conditions. This will help the Emirates Group to preserve business viability and avoid any employment layoffs.

Emirates Temporarily Stops All Passenger Flights due to COVID-19, dnata reduces operations, Employees to Reduce Salary

The statement also mentions that there will be a reduction of salary of its employees. says Chairman and Chief Executive of Emirates Group, His Highness Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum said “Rather than ask employees to leave the business, we chose to implement a temporary basic salary cut as we want to protect our workforce and keep our talented and skilled people, as much as possible. We want to avoid cutting jobs. When demand picks up again, we also want to be able to quickly ramp up and resume services for our customers.”

Below is the Tweet From Emirates from their Official Twitter account:

Airline Ticket Refund for Customers

Emirates has set up a dedicated page for customers who have already booked flight tickets. Please visit this page if you are affected – https://www.emirates.com/english/help/refund-request/

The airlines apologized to its customers for any inconvenience that has arisen due to the suspension of services. They are watching the situation closely and will reinstate their services as soon as it i feasible.

“The world has literally gone into quarantine due to the COVID-19 outbreak. This is an unprecedented crisis situation in terms of breadth and scale: geographically, as well as from a health, social, and economic standpoint. Until January 2020, the Emirates Group was doing well against our current financial year targets. But COVID-19 has brought all that to a sudden and painful halt over the past 6 weeks.” says Sheikh Ahmed.

“As a global network airline, we find ourselves in a situation where we cannot viably operate passenger services until countries re-open their borders, and travel confidence returns. By Wednesday 25 March, although we will still operate cargo flights which remain busy, Emirates will have temporarily suspended all its passenger operations. We continue to watch the situation closely, and as soon as things allow, we will reinstate our services.

Below are some of the cost-cutting measures they will put into place:

Cost reduction measures

The Emirates Group has undertaken a series of measures to contain costs, as the outlook for travel demand remains weak across markets in the short to medium term. This includes:

  • Postponing or cancelling discretionary expenditure
  • A freeze on all non-essential recruitment and consultancy work
  • Working with suppliers to find cost savings and efficiency
  • Encouraging employees to take paid or unpaid leave in light of reduced flying capacity
    A temporary reduction of basic salary for the majority of Emirates Group employees for three months, ranging from 25% to 50%. Employees will continue to be paid their other allowances during this time. Junior level employees will be exempt from basic salary reduction
  • Presidents of Emirates and dnata – Sir Tim Clark and Gary Chapman – will take a 100% basic salary cut for three months