Airline CEOs plead with White House to avert looming U.S. job cuts

Mark Meadows White house chief of staff on Thursday met with the major airline chief executives as the industry prepares for thousand of job cuts in two weeks time, he then encouraged lawmakers to embrace the coronavirus aid package which is $1.5trillion as proposed by a bipartisan congressional group and endorsed by President Donald Trump. “if (House) Speaker (Nancy) Pelosi was willing to move a bill to keep people from being laid off in the airline industry that’s stand-alone, that the president would certainly support it.” Meadows said this to reporters.

Public transit, bus companies, Amtrak passenger rail service and other transportation sectors are seeking billions of dollars in new bailout funds. The administration had been examined executive action option and am of them at less that ideal said Meadows.

A new proposal was not offered by Airlines but again made the case that helping avert airline job cuts was one good reason to pass a broad coronavirus relief bill. After the meeting with Meadows, American Airlines AAL.O Chief Executive Doug Parker said it was “not fair” that thousands of airline workers were about to be laid off. “It’s not fair to them, it’s not fair to our country. He then stated we’re just here to plead with everyone involved to get to a COVID relief package before October 1,” Parker said.