BA to cut 40 jobs at Belfast airport

BA is to stop its Belfast City to Sheffield route

Up to 40 jobs are under threat at Belfast City Airport following the decision by British Airways to stop using the city as a base for aircrew.

BA announced on Wednesday that it was closing its flight and cabin crew unit as part of cutbacks at its CitiExpress subsidiary.

The company is also discontinuing its service between Belfast and Sheffield, although the operator's seven other routes are not affected.

BA said it hoped the level of job losses would be kept to a minimum through redeployment.

Cabin crew, support staff and engineering jobs will go

The job losses are part of a reduction of 500 staff over the next two years at BA's regional airline CitiExpress, which flys short-haul routes in the UK and Europe.

Scottish workers seem likely to bear the brunt of the changes at CitiExpress, which include the closure of BA's reporting base at Aberdeen and the scrapping of two loss-making routes - from Cardiff to Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Crew reporting bases in Jersey will also be closed, CitiExpress said.

Meanwhile the UK's second biggest airline, BMI British Midland, warned that trading conditions remain "extremely challenging".

It made operating losses of almost £12m, but said these were mitigated by gains from the sale of its handling division and the transfer of its ticket reservation business to German carrier Lufthansa.

Capacity cuts

Airlines worldwide have been struggling to adjust to the dramatic decline in passenger numbers which followed the 11 September suicide hijackings in the United States.

BA has cut thousands of jobs to tackle falling demand and growing competition from budget airlines, such as Easyjet and Go, on European short-haul routes.

CitiExpress decided the job cuts were needed after carrying out a review of regional operations, its own version of BA's sweeping Future Size and Shape review which was completed in February.

CitiExpress said it will withdraw 12 loss making regional routes altogether, to achieve cost savings of £20m a year by 2004.

Overall, it will reduce capacity on regional routes by 8%.