(Bloomberg) -- Air Canada said it expects the impact of the pandemic to last at least three years and predicted large job cuts as it hunkers down to survive “the darkest period ever” for the industry.

The country’s biggest airline, which on Monday reported a first-quarter loss, said it expects capacity in the third quarter to be 75% below last year’s level, from a 85-90% drop in the current quarter. It is accelerating plans to retire 79 planes and continues to look for ways to reduce costs and boost liquidity, it said.

“We expect that both the overall industry and our airline will be considerably smaller for some time, which will unfortunately result in significant reductions in both fleet and employee levels,” Chief Executive Calin Rovinescu said in a statement. He described the situation as “the darkest period ever in the history of commercial aviation.”

Air Canada’s “determination is to ensure that our company is positioned to emerge in the post-Covid-19 world as strong as possible and capitalize on the opportunities that will inevitably arise,” he said.

In contrast to major competitors around the world, Canadian airlines haven’t yet received industry-specific support from the government. So far Air Canada has said it will use a 75% wage subsidy to keep or recall most of the 36,000 employees in Canada who were furloughed.

For the first quarter, Air Canada reported a loss of C$1.05 billion ($745 million) compared to a profit of C$345 million last year. On an adjusted basis, the loss was C$392 million versus a profit of C$17 million last year.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.