Up to 36 jobs could be lost at Newquay airport after it was decided that a major restructure was needed due to the loss of business caused by coronavirus.

Staff at Cornwall Airport Newquay were informed of the news on Wednesday.

It comes after Cornwall Council revealed it could take “years” for passenger numbers to return to the levels seen before the pandemic.

Jobs affected will include those in the café, retail, passenger services, security, airside and office-based business support functions.

Corserv, the company which operates the airport and is owned by Cornwall Council, said that no fire service or air traffic control jobs would be affected.

The company said it would be looking to help those affected to be redeployed elsewhere in the Corserv group.

The airport has been hit doubly hard after the collapse of FlyBe, which was responsible for the majority of its flights, followed by the lockdown.

Geoff Brown, Cabinet member for transport, told a meeting of the Cabinet this morning that a restructuring plan had been drawn up.

He said: “Pre-Covid passenger numbers are unlikely to be seen for several years.

“The airport has a restructuring plan to ensure that it remains viable for the years to come.”

In a statement Corserv, which operates Cornwall Airport Limited, said: “Since March this year, the airline industry has experienced unprecedented uncertainty across the world. The coronavirus crisis has resulted in a deep downturn as passenger revenue plummets, air traffic falls, and airlines have gone out of business. Aviation experts are forecasting that it will take at least three years to recover from the recent disruption to the industry.

“This has, of course, had an impact on the planned activity for Cornwall Airport Newquay. Although progress is being made to bounce back by securing new airline carriers, we have to restructure our operations to reflect the size and scale of our business.

“The activity planned at the airport for the remainder of 2020 is 80 per cent lower than originally anticipated. This significant change means we have to adapt our operational practices, and these changes will result in redundancies.

“We have started consultations with our workforce, however we anticipate that up to 36 employees may be made redundant. Teams where redundancies are being made are from passenger services, café and retail, security, airside and office based business support functions. There is no anticipated change in the headcount within our fire service or air traffic control teams as the aerodrome operating hours remain broadly unchanged.

“We do appreciate that redundancies at any time are unwelcome and we will be supporting those who are impacted throughout this process. We will do everything we can to reduce the number of redundancies and wherever possible we will provide redeployment opportunities within the Corserv Group.”