Boeing Co. is not the only airplane manufacturing facing issues during the coronavirus crisis.
Guillaume Faury, CEO of France-based Airbus, told the company's 135,000 workers in a letter that the global pandemic has had a trickle-down effect that is threatening its very existence.
Airbus is "bleeding cash at an unprecedented speed," Faury wrote according to the British Broadcasting Corp.
With worldwide travel demand at an all-time low, airlines have cut their routes down to the minimum and have parked more than half of their planes. As a result, carriers are not making any new purchases of aircraft and Airbus announced earlier this month it was cutting production by a third.
Faury also told employees to brace for job cuts and pay cuts. The company has already begun furloughs.
Aviation expert Greg Waldron of Flight Global said "The outlook for Airbus has gone from very positive to very negative. There's simply no demand for new aircraft at the moment. Every assumption we had about the industry has been totally upended."
The BBC noted that Waldron thinks Airbus can survive but only if it significantly trims staff.
"Airbus is a crucially important industrial program for Europe, I think Europe will be committed to keeping Airbus going," he said. "However, there's going to be a great deal of pain to go through. If they cut production rates quite significantly you're going to see large numbers of layoffs. I would expect in a few years you'll see a smaller leaner Airbus than what we have now."
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