In June, the Latvian airline airBaltic transported more than 60 000 passengers to and from the capital cities of the Baltic States. The number of new bookings and demand had already tripled between June and July.
The State Employment Agency (NVA) has concluded that, in March, aviation-related companies in general planned to sack a higher number of employees due to the COVID-19 crisis than they actually have dismissed so far.
During the crisis, the Latvian national airline airBaltic has dismissed 670 employees. Alina Roščina, the airline's senior vice president for staff management, explained that the working relationship had been suspended in the framework of collective redundancies or inspections, but there were also employees who had decided to accept other career challenges.
At present, more than 1150 employees work for airBaltic.
“By terminating our employment relationship following an agreement with the employees, we also provided a guarantee for the year ahead and, accordingly, by resuming operations, we also understand where there is a need to recruit gradually, and at this point 17 colleagues have resumed work, already on a permanent basis,” Roščina informed.
airBaltic said that as business develops, unemployed colleagues will be called to re-join the collective.
In March, the State Employment Agency received statements from eight employers in aviation sector on collective redundancies. A total of more than 1800 employees were planned to be laid off, while only 710 were actually dismissed.
The agency's spokeswoman, Eva Lapsiņa, pointed out that all eight employers had planned to lay off a larger number of employees than they actually did, and that quite a lot of employees have already settled back into work.
