There are no flights!

Ananish Chaudhuri at NZ Herald writes:

It has recently been reported that Air NZ management is planning to lay off nearly 400 pilots and around 1500 cabin crew. I think Foran and others in Air NZ’s senior leadership team are making a mistake. …

Recessions pass. In fact, large scale lay-offs often make recessions worse. Workers who are laid off are pessimistic about their chances of getting work in the future. Even the ones who have work are afraid of losing their jobs and therefore cut down on spending. This exacerbates recessions.

This argument would hold water if this was a normal recession where some external event unrelated to travel caused a recession such as a financial crisis.

But this recession is caused by a pandemic which will mean minimal travel for 18 months or longer.

Quite simply there are no flights, so of course Air NZ has to lay off staff. I guarantee you there will be more to come. They have no choice. You can’t pay pilots an cabin crew to staff non existent flights.