According to United Airlines executive Chairman Oscar Munoz, if airline industry in the United States wants to survive, it will have to cut its labour costs by half.

Such cuts would mean either layoffs or reductions in worker hours and pay, Mundoz, former CEO of United, explained in an interview to CNN Business. 

According to him, the crisis created by COVID-19 pandemic is “orders of magnitude larger than anything we've ever seen." Although the industry “has gone through hell and back” before, this time the situation is far worse than, for example, the downturn after 9/11.

READ MORE:
 
Parallels between post-9/11 shock and current pandemic
While the current pandemic-induced crisis is not over yet, it is no like other in the history of the aviation industry, However, can we draw parallels with the post-9/11 crisis?
 

According to Mundoz, although the major airlines have enough financial resources to survive through the next year, the longer it takes for the industry to recover, the more bankruptcies and closures there will be. The only way out of this is reducing payroll, meaning job cuts or pay cuts.

"We tell our employees that we are going to be a smaller airline for some time and we hope to get back to the place where we were. But we think that's quite a bit a ways out," Munoz said. United is planning to put almost 3000 pilots on unpaid leave as the CARES act expires in late September, in addition to tens of thousands of other workers. "Hopefully things recover and we can bring everyone back," Munoz said of them. 

READ MORE:
 
Counting losses of US Big Four: who is hit the most?
As the financial results of the second quarter become available, the full picture of monumental losses COVID-19 lockdowns inflicted on the airline industry appears. Let’s take a deeper look at the worst crisis airlines have suffered so far.