The recent emergency of COVID-19 has significantly impacted the operation of Virgin airline despite many years of success. Since its founding in 1984 by a former English philanthropist, author, investor, and business magnet, the UK passenger airline has encountered ups and downs. The recent COVID -19 pandemic is a unique challenge and headache to the management team. In March 2020, the company asked its workers to take an unpaid leave of eight weeks. In the wake of the pandemic, further announcements are made to lay off about 3000 staff, reducing the fleet size to 35, for instance, retiring the 747-400s Boeing. Additional 1150 job cuts from all the departments are announced in September.
In a crisis time, the primary management practices include rewarding, specialized staff training, standardization, predictability, efficiency, and control. Rewarding employees has become almost unattainable due to travel restrictions from various destinations due to financial constraints. A wide range of benefits are offered to the staff include discounted services and goods, seven flights a year, private medical care, and pensions. Instead, many of the workers are laid off. Specialized training of staff has been significantly hampered too. The virgin has in place a lengthy recruitment process that involves free training. Efficiency has been on the decline as the entire airline operations have almost come to a standstill.
The past six months from March 2020 have been the challenging moments ever in the company’s history. Survival has been through preserving the available and reducing the costs of operations further. The company is more exposed than its rivals, mainly due to reliance on transatlantic traffic and travel restrictions to the US. To succeed, the company, therefore, needs to scale down its operation into a small business. Resizing and reshaping the size of the business helps ensure that the future is fit. Decisive decision to preserve cash, reduce costs, and protecting many jobs as possible is an idea for the future. The exploration of additional funding by the company is vital. Engaging in discussions with relevant stakeholders and the government to offer financial support will help the company safeguard its future. The company needs to engage in extra profitable businesses to source extra funds to sustain the effects of COVID-19.simplifying the fleet, and optimizing the network also helps sustain Virgin Atlantic as a sustainable leader in the aviation industry.