Graeme Paton reports for The Times that Easyjet has grounded its entire fleet of jets in response to coronavirus. He writes:
Easyjet has grounded its entire fleet because of the coronavirus pandemic as speculation mounted that crisis-hit airlines will seek Treasury bailouts to avoid complete collapse.
The budget airline, which carried 96 million passengers last year, said that it would park all 344 of its planes and temporarily lay off cabin crew to remove “significant costs”.
It said that there was “no certainty” for the date of restarting commercial flights.
Easyjet is the first of the UK’s major airlines to completely ground its fleet following a collapse in demand caused by coronavirus. It has already run 650 “rescue flights” to repatriate 45,000 passengers who faced being stranded abroad by lockdown measures imposed by countries such as Italy and Spain.
Read more here.