Montreal-based leisure airline Air Transat announced Monday morning that it is temporarily laying off “about 70 per cent” of its workforce.
In a release, the company specified that a total of 3,600 people will be out of a job for now, including all of its flight crew staff. Some will continue working for up to a month, while others are laid off effective immediately.
Transat executives who are not impacted by the layoffs have agreed to take a pay cut, the company said, as have members of its board of directors.
Until it halts all flights next month, the company is continuing to send planes abroad to bring Canadians back home from overseas.
“None of our customers are stuck far from home, and we are in the process of bringing them back,” president and CEO Jean-Marc Eustache said in the company statement.
As of Sunday evening, the airline said it had repatriated 40,000 of its customers who were abroad on March 18. A further 25,000 remain in what the company referred to as “Sun or Europe destinations.”
The company says its final scheduled flight before it suspends operations will take off on April 1.
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