The owner of Manchester, Stansted and East Midlands airports is to cut nearly 900 jobs as the furlough scheme ends.
Manchester Airports Group (MAG) said demand for travel had slumped by 90% since March with prospects for a revival fading as coronavirus case numbers rise and little progress on introducing airport testing for UK passengers.
The group said it was proposing to cut 465 jobs at Manchester, 376 at Stansted and 51 at East Midlands and make other employment changes including to shift patterns.
It said it had made “extensive use” of the government’s job retention scheme which has subsidised wages for workers temporarily laid off during the pandemic.
But that is being replaced by a jobs support scheme, offering a “much smaller contribution to meeting payroll costs” for six months from the start of November.
“The reduction in government financial support, combined with a more challenging outlook, means that MAG now needs to propose further steps to reduce the size of its workforce to secure the long-term future of the business,” the company said in a statement.