Finnair scraps 700 jobs as thousands stay laid off

The national flag carrier Finnair cuts about 700 jobs – 600 in Finland and 100 outside of Finland – as a part of its redundancy scheduled to be implemented by the end of March 2021, said a press release of the airline on Tuesday.

Finnair completed the co-operation process started in September on its plans to reduce up to 1,000 jobs, to make other structural changes and to implement additional temporary layoffs due to the impacts of the corona pandemic.

The co-operation process concerned all Finnair employees in Finland except for cabin and cockpit crew, altogether 2800 employees.

In total, Finnair currently employs approximately 6500 employees.

“The corona pandemic has been completely unfair to our industry and unfortunately many Finnair employees now must experience its financial implications personally,” said Finnair CEO Topi Manner.

“The changes are, however, necessary and inevitable. Finnair’s re-build requires us to be competitive when aviation gradually starts to recover. Therefore, in the future, we will have to do many things differently in order to succeed in the competitive market,” the CEO added.

In addition to the redundancies, Finnair continues temporary layoffs impacting most of its employees in Finland. For many, the temporary layoffs may continue for a long time as the recovery of aviation will take several years according to the industry estimates.