BRITISH Airways has made 19 managers redundant after halting an expansion programme for its Travel Shops.
The axeing of the programme has led to BA bringing the outlets under the control of its telephone sales team.
The airline blamed the expansion programme’s suspension on an economic downturn.
It said the 23 existing Travel Shops will be targeted for growth instead.
General manager telephone sales Robin Hayes now has responsibility for the shops, which previously came under Tony Marwick before he moved to Japan as BA area manager.
Hayes said: “We had a three-year plan to get between 40 to 70 shops, but this has been suspended for the time being. We found that people were telephoning travel shops, rather than visiting and we need to address that.”
BA said there was still a strong commitment to Travel Shops.
The carrier has appointed Harry Kotchie as operations director and Andrew Swaffield as commercial director in the new Travel Shop set-up.
Former finance manager Kotchie will be in charge of finance, systems, and human resources and former business travel manager Swaffield will look after business and retail sales and marketing.
The airline said the jobless managers will be offered positions in the BA group, early retirement or severance packages.
“The managers will come to us over the next three weeks to discuss their options,” said Hayes.