CityJet (WX, Dublin International) plans to lay off up to 276 employees at its Irish and UK operations and a further 400 to 450 at various cities across Europe, the ACMI/charter specialist has informed unions, local media reported.

It told unions representing its employees that it would launch a consultation process on the Irish and UK redundancies, which would impact its engineering and administrative staff, pilots, and cabin crew. It blamed the impact on its business from the Covid-19 pandemic.

In April, the company entered into examinership, a legal process in Ireland granting insolvent firms protection from creditors, and the Dublin High Court appointed Kieran Wallace of KPMG as interim examiner.

“CityJet has operated from Dublin International for almost 27 years, so this is a sad time for us as we must react to market conditions and enter into an enforced downsizing of our core infrastructure,” Pat Byrne, the company’s executive chairman, said in a statement.

“CityJet is made up of hundreds of dedicated people with extraordinary skills, and it is sincerely regrettable that we now must prepare to lose the skills and services of so many of our loyal and excellent colleagues. Our priority is to put CityJet back on a stable footing during this examinership process, and we are working with the examiner to make every effort to get through the process successfully,” he added.

A full review of the business is now being conducted - including a probe of its current and potential business opportunities and its wet-lease operations for SAS Scandinavian Airlines and Aer Lingus - to restructure CityJet to make it more sustainable over the long term.

Before the current crisis, the carrier employed 1,175 people, around 410 of whom are based in Dublin. Local subsidiaries have employed others at bases at Amsterdam Schiphol, Brussels National, Copenhagen Kastrup, Helsinki Vantaa, London City, Paris CDG, Stockholm Arlanda, Tallinn Lennart Meri, and Vilnius airports, according to the ch-aviation PRO airlines module.

Although all capacity had been placed for 2020, the crisis saw four of the airline’s five planned customer carriers cancel their contracts in March, leading to a significant reduction in the scale of its planned operations, the company said.