Aeroméxico's financial restructuring threatens 2,600 jobs

An Aeroméxico counter at the airport in the Mexican capital.EDGARD GARRIDO / Reuters

Aeromexico continues with its plans to reduce its workforce in the face of the severe blow that the pandemic has dealt it.

The airline on Tuesday asked the Southern District Court of New York, the court that is processing its financial restructuring, to authorize the dismissal of 1,830 ground employees.

This figure is in addition to the 766 surcharges that the company and its subsidiary Connect also plan to liquidate, with which the layoffs can reach at least 2,596 workers.

Meanwhile, negotiations with the pilots are stalled after they have rejected a proposal to reduce wages and modify their working conditions, union sources tell this newspaper.

Subject to the hearing to authorize the layoffs, scheduled for November 16, the liquidation of ground personnel will cost just over $ 31 million.

The dismissals of flight attendants, requested in mid-October, will, in turn, entail the payment of 6.2 million dollars.

Even so, Aeromexico expects that the savings from the reduction of personnel will compensate these disbursements.

The flag carrier is immersed in a restructuring plan since the end of last June when it filed for Chapter 11 of the United States bankruptcy law.

The new investor, the US fund Apollo, has committed an injection of 1,000 million dollars, part of which has already been authorized by the judicial authorities.

With this package, the company hopes to get around the pothole.

Although in November the company operates 83% of the domestic flights that operated in the same month of 2019, the recovery is progressing at a slower rate than expected, especially in the international arena.

Personnel layoffs are part of the equation "in view of the prospect of a prolonged process of recovery in demand," as the latest quarterly report points out.

In addition to the massive liquidations, the company has also negotiated licenses without pay, such as those that have been applied since July to 266 of the 1,800 pilots it has.

323 flight attendants are also expected to use the same scheme.

For now, the airline has not presented a liquidation plan for the pilots, although negotiations with the union have been stalled for several weeks.

The pilots point to the breach of the increase in wages according to inflation, agreed in the March agreement.

In addition, the union has rejected a company proposal that it claims included wage reductions and intensive hours with night flights for up to three days in a row.

"The proposal is unfeasible, it is very similar to a low-cost model," says a spokesman for the Union Association of Airmen Pilots (ASPA).

The union says that in the next few days they will present a counterproposal that will take into account the need to restructure but will avoid touching the heart of labor contracts.

All in all, ASPA rules out a strike call for now pending further negotiation.

The unofficial deadline is December 31 when the last agreement agreed between the company and pilots to face the pandemic expires.

Aeromexico is not the only airline in trouble.

Interjet, until recently the second largest airline in the country, has been suffering from serious financial problems since before the pandemic.

Over the weekend, the company had to cancel dozens of flights that affected some 3,000 passengers for not having enough money to pay for the supply of jet fuel, the fuel for planes.

The Federal Prosecutor's Office for the Consumer warned on Tuesday "about the risk of establishing commercial relations with Interjet."

Contrary to what other countries have done, the Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador has refused to present a rescue package for the sector.

The response plan to the coronavirus crisis, criticized for its weakness, has mainly consisted of granting microcredits to small and medium-sized companies and has left out the larger ones.