Air Canada to lay off more than 20,000 people

Canada's largest airline said it plans to lay off at least 20,000 employees because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Air Canada said the pandemic has forced it to reduce scheduled flights by 95 percent, and it does not expect normal traffic to return any time soon.

"We therefore took the extremely difficult decision today to significantly downsize our operation to align with forecasts, which regrettably means reducing our workforce by 50 to 60 percent," the airline said in a statement.