Hiring Freeze Announced By Delta Due To Coronavirus

ATLANTA, GA — Delta Air Lines is instituting a company-wide hiring freeze and will offer voluntary leave options as a way to streamline costs. The company announced the news Tuesday, attributing the decision to a "decline in demand" as the new Coronavirus continues to spread.

The Atlanta-based company says it is reducing system capacity by 15 percent domestically and up to 25 percent internationally.

“In the weeks since COVID-19 emerged, Delta people have risen to the challenge, taking every possible action to take care of and protect our customers during a stressful time,” said Delta CEO Ed Bastian in a public statement.

“As the virus has spread, we have seen a decline in demand across all entities, and we are taking decisive action to also protect Delta’s financial position. As a result, we have made the difficult, but necessary decision to immediately reduce capacity and are implementing cost reductions and cash flow initiatives across the organization.”

Globally, more than 115,000 people have been infected and more than 4,000 people have died from the new coronavirus, Johns Hopkins reported Tuesday morning. Of that total, more than 80,000 confirmed cases are in China, while the entire United States has 755 confirmed cases as of Tuesday morning. Twenty-two deaths in the U.S. have been tied to the virus outbreak.

Delta is also undertaking other cost reduction initiatives such as parking certain aircraft and evaluating early retirements of older aircraft.

This news comes just after the company said in January that it had experienced a successful year. Delta’s 90,000 employees were told they would receive a $1.6 billion in profit-sharing bonuses. The company said then that every eligible employee would receive a check in February for 16.6 percent of their annual salary, which is the equivalent of an additional two months' pay.

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