As the situation regarding the virus continues to worsen, more and more airlines are updating their schedules to reflect all of the travel bans and the lesser amount of passengers able to travel. The Middle East seems to have a lower amount of cases compared to the rest of the world, but that has still prompted the airlines in the area to make some dramatic changes and cuts to services. Emirates recently announced some massive news which I think most didn’t expect would be this severe.

The airline first announced that they would be suspending just about all of their flights before this decision was later changed. Emirates will cancel all of their services in a couple of days with the suspension of services set to last two weeks. The airline previously said that over 100 of destinations served would be cut with the grounding of nearly all of the carriers A380’s.

Emirates Will Cancel All Of Their Services In A Couple Of Days

• The suspension of all services will come into effect at 11:59 pm on the 25th of March
• The only flights the airline will operating will be for support and cargo 
• The airline hasn’t provided an exact date as to when flights will resume
• The CEO of Emirates & Dnata will take a 100% pay cut for three months
• The airline has stopped all non-essential employment
• Employees are set to take a reduction between 25-50% between the next week months; this will not apply for junior members of the airline
• The airline is asking its employees to take unpaid leave
• The airline isn’t giving full refunds for cancelled bookings

As per the HH Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum:

“The world has literally gone into quarantine due to the COVID-19 outbreak. This is an unprecedented crisis situation in terms of breadth and scale: geographically, as well as from a health, social, and economic standpoint. Until January 2020, the Emirates Group was doing well against our current financial year targets. But COVID-19 has brought all that to a sudden and painful halt over the past 6 weeks.

“As a global network airline, we find ourselves in a situation where we cannot viably operate passenger services until countries re-open their borders, and travel confidence returns. By Wednesday 25 March, although we will still operate cargo flights which remain busy, Emirates will have temporarily suspended most of its passenger operations. We continue to watch the situation closely, and as soon as things allow, we will reinstate our services.”

While cuts from airlines come as no surprise, I was a little blown away when I read this news this morning. Emirates is a huge airline with an extensive network, so this will be very expensive. The airline is also able to do this due to how the airline is being funded. The overall situation is entirely different in other countries hence the airlines falling into bankruptcy.

The airline has said that this will be for two weeks, but I’d not be one bit surprised to see this extended, especially considering how fast the situation is going around the world.

Are you affected by any of these changes?