Bad news of course, but perhaps they will ask for volunteers for redundancy first, and those who wish to take early retirement, or are already in the pool at Virgin or BA will be able to go voluntarily.
The other good point is that it is not the whole industry that is in a bad way right now - plenty of airlines are recruiting, so although it is never a good time to lose your job, there is a glimmer of hope that all those pilots being forcibly made redundant will be able to get jobs with other operators.
They were saying on the news that 540 jobs were to go, presumably the rest are cabin crew or ground staff.