Air Berlin says on way to securing jobs for 80% of staff

Air Berlin said on Monday that four-fifths of its 6,500 employees should have good prospects to continue working with the buyers of its 140 aircraft, as the group struggles to execute an orderly wind-down. The carrier filed for insolvency last month after Etihad, its main shareholder, said it would stop funding the lossmaking company. The decision has thrown the company into disarray; earlier this month 200 of its 1,500 pilots had called in sick at short notice, forcing the group to cancel more than 100 of its 750 daily flights. Air Berlin CE Thomas Winkelmann said Monday that the airline plans to end its long-haul operations on October 15, as leasing firms are recalling its Airbus A330 jets. Some planes have already been returned or are in the process of being returned. Monday marked the final connection between Dusseldorf and Los Angeles, for instance, while some regional flights in Germany will cease after Friday. But Air Berlin said on Monday Lufthansa had offered to buy parts of Niki, the Austrian low-cost airline, as well as LGW, a Dortmund-based regional airline that it had acquired earlier this year. EasyJet offered to buy other parts of the fleet. Negotiations are expected to go until October 12. Winkelmann said that if these offers are finalised, there were good prospects for the group to pay back the €150m bridging loan offered by the federal government to get the airline through the summer. Without that loan, he said at a press conference, “we would have been forced to ground the fleet on the weekend of August 12/13. This would have meant the immediate loss of employment for all employees”. But Winkelmann was optimistic about his staff receiving job offers from the new owners of its aircraft. “We are on the way to giving around 80% of our colleagues a good chance of getting new jobs with the bidders,” he said. The company added that concluding the negotiations “will open up job prospects for several thousand employees.”<br/>