KUALA LUMPUR: AirAsia Group Bhd has reduced about 2,400 of its staff since Malaysia's international borders closed in March, but the low-cost carrier is pledging to rehire all of them when the time comes.
The group's founder and chief executive officer Tan Sri Tony Fernandes said this was its top priority as it enters the new year and faces a post-Covid-19 recovery period.
He said the group had retrained about 500 other staff members through and relocated them to different jobs under the group.
This effort included programmes under AirAsia Digital's RedBeat Academy, a collaboration with Google.
"I was asked by TV3 on what are my priorities. The first priority is no more job losses. Second priority is to rehire all my staff who were let go.
"They did nothing wrong. They're great staff and they've been very good people to AirAsia. It's just a crazy time. But that is my number one and two principles," he told the New Straits Times Press today when visiting Balai Berita as part of the low cost carrier's annual visit to media houses in conjunction with the holiday season.
When elaborating on staff retraining efforts, Fernandes said 500 AirAsia staff were reskilled and given different job scopes.
Some of these former aircraft crew were even involved in data sciences and analytics, said Fernandes, a move which can also be seen in a separate in-house retraining initiative under Malaysia Airlines Bhd.
"About 500 of our staff have been re-allocated to other jobs, and many of them are undergoing retraining.
"We opened the RedBeat academy. (AirAsia Digital president ) Aireen Omar built that, and that's an effort with Google.
"Many of our staff members are retraining to be data scientists, data engineers and other things."
On Oct 9, Fernandes had said the company had reduced more than 10 per cent of its 24,000-member workforce.
It was reported that the airline had laid off over 2,400 employees since Malaysia's borders were closed on March 18 this year.
The last round of retrenchment involving cabin crew and pilots ended in early October.
