Aerospace giant Airbus has reported a 49 per cent fall in profits as the company's chief executive warned the industry was facing the “gravest crisis” it had ever known.
The company saw first-quarter adjusted operating profit drop to 281million euros - down from 549million euros for the same period in 2019.
Revenues also dropped 15 per cent from 12.5billion euros last year to 10.6billion euros in the first quarter of 2020.
The chief executive of Airbus, Guillaume Faury, said despite a solid start to the year, the company was now seeing the impact of the Covid-19 outbreak.
“We are now in the midst of the gravest crisis the aerospace industry has ever known,” he said, adding the company was "implementing a number of measures" to secure its future.
“We kicked off early by bolstering available liquidity to support financial flexibility," he explained.
"We’re adapting commercial aircraft production rates in line with customer demand and concentrating on cash containment and our longer-term cost structure to ensure we can return to normal operations once the situation improves.
“At all times, the health and safety of Airbus’ employees is our top priority. Now we need to work as an industry to restore passenger confidence in air travel as we learn to coexist with this pandemic.
"We’re focused on the resilience of our company to ensure business continuity.”
The results come just two days after Airbus UK announced it was furloughing 3,200 workers at its Broughton site in North Wales.
The plane maker confirmed the employees will be put on the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme - where the UK Government pays 80 per cent of the wages.
This move was in addition to 500 Broughton workers who were furloughed by contractor Guidant earlier this month.
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