Britannia axes jobs and cuts plane fleet

BRITANNIA Airways, the charter airline owned by Thomson Holidays, is reducing the size and make-up of its fleet and making 560 of its 3,200 staff redundant, writes John Shepherd.

The move comes less than a week after Thomson announced a shake-up of its core tour operations in response to the increasing competition from Airtours and Owners Abroad.

Britannia, based in Luton, operates at 10 airports including Gatwick, Manchester, Stansted and Birmingham. Nearly 80 per cent of its business comes from Thomson.

Almost one third of the job losses will be pilots. Most of the remainder will fall on the engineering and maintenance staff.

There is some hope that 60 of the planned redundancies may not happen. Britannia's ground handling operation at Luton is being taken over by Servisair and many staff will be offered the chance to change over.

The changes to the airline fleet are designed to increase capacity and cut costs. 'We are moving to a fleet that is the right size and right for the market we serve,' said Stephen Allen, Britannia's marketing and sales director.

The number of aircraft will be reduced from 38 to 29, but the number of seats will be increased. All 14 of Britannia's Boeing 737s, which carry 200 passengers, are being phased out, while its fleet of 757s, with 235 seats, is being increased by seven to 19.

With Britannia's 10 Boeing 767 aircraft, the changes will increase capacity by 5 per cent to 7,285 seats. Britannia carried nearly 7 million passengers last year.