Cebu Pacific is laying off more than 800 employees by August as it expects no recovery in the short term due to coronavirus  disease (COVID-19) pandemic. 

“Over the past several weeks, CEB has had to review and redefine its long-term plans around the changing needs of customers, employees and the travel industry as a whole,” the Gokongwei-led airline said. 

“ It was clear after this process that CEB was too big for the operational requirements and expected new norms in the industry,” it added. 

Because of this, the airline is constrained to retrench more than 800 employees by August 2020.

“This is a difficult but necessary decision for CEB in order to fulfill its long-term commitment to provide affordable and accessible air transport services to the public,” Cebu Pacific said.

“Rest assured that this process was undertaken with utmost transparency, sensitivity and responsibility to all CEB stakeholders,” it added. 

The budget airline earlier laid off 150 newly-hired cabin crew. 

As of 2019, Cebu Pacific has 4,352 permanent full time employees, of which, 3,499 are involved in operations, 350 commercial and 553, support departments. 

The airline earlie reported a net loss of P1.18 billion from January to March, a reversal from the P3.35-billion net income posted in the same period last year.

Revenue tumbled 25 percent in the first quarter to P15.91 billon from P21.77 billion a year ago following the cancellation of regional flights.

Passenger revenues decreased 27.4 percent to P11.38 billion from P15.679 billion in the three months ending March 2019.

The group saw a 16.5 percent drop in passenger traffic from P5.3 million to 4.4 million, as flights decreased 14.7 percent and load factor declined 2.9 percentage points from 84.2 percent to 81.3 percent.