Hundreds of long-serving Virgin Atlantic cabin crew are suing the airline for unfair dismissal, claiming that the airline used Covid redundancies to target older staff. An employment tribunal in London will start examining more than 200 cases next month, at which former crew will argue that Sir Richard Branson’s airline unfairly made them redundant while retaining cheaper new hires. Virgin grounded most of its fleet, alongside most other airlines, from March 2020, when the Covid pandemic led to lockdowns and global travel restrictions. The airline quickly cut 3,000 jobs, eventually losing more than 40% of its 10,000-strong workforce, and established a “holding pool” for staff who were made redundant to be potentially hired again when flights resumed. However, according to one claim, disclosure documents show that Virgin retained 350 new cabin crew via the pool, some with as little as one week’s training, while onboard managers, who were 45 on average with 20 years’ experience, were made redundant. One of the onboard managers who lost her job was Susan Mcentegart, now 53, who had worked for Virgin for 23 years. She is part of a group of 51 claimants being represented by a Luton-based law firm. She said: “It seemed...