Lufthansa warns of 10,000 excess jobs
Lufthansa has said that it will be left with 10,000 excess staff as it becomes a permanently smaller airline due to Covid-19, in one of the starkest signs of the industry’s woes since the outbreak began. In a webcast to employees on Friday, CE Carsten Spohr said the carrier, which has already furloughed almost 90,000 of its 135,000 employees, was unlikely to experience pre-crisis levels of demand until 2023. “We expect yields to be 10% lower and the load factor on our aircraft to be 10% lower,” he said, adding that the company would do what it could to preserve jobs. “After the crisis, we will have to spend over a billion euros a year to repay loans.” The airline, which is seeking state aid in Germany, Austria, Belgium and Switzerland, also said it would be likely to rid itself of 100 aircraft as it concentrated on operating fewer, larger planes. Earlier this week, unions representing Lufthansa employees appealed to Angela Merkel’s government, calling for state aid to be contingent on maintaining jobs. But on Friday, Spohr implied that the airline’s workforce would have to shrink. “This pandemic will not be over until there is a vaccine available worldwide,” he said. “We were the first industry to be affected by this global crisis and aviation will be one of the last to leave it.” <br/>
https://portal.staralliance.com/cms/news/hot-topics/2020-04-27/star/lufthansa-warns-of-10-000-excess-jobs
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Lufthansa warns of 10,000 excess jobs
Lufthansa has said that it will be left with 10,000 excess staff as it becomes a permanently smaller airline due to Covid-19, in one of the starkest signs of the industry’s woes since the outbreak began. In a webcast to employees on Friday, CE Carsten Spohr said the carrier, which has already furloughed almost 90,000 of its 135,000 employees, was unlikely to experience pre-crisis levels of demand until 2023. “We expect yields to be 10% lower and the load factor on our aircraft to be 10% lower,” he said, adding that the company would do what it could to preserve jobs. “After the crisis, we will have to spend over a billion euros a year to repay loans.” The airline, which is seeking state aid in Germany, Austria, Belgium and Switzerland, also said it would be likely to rid itself of 100 aircraft as it concentrated on operating fewer, larger planes. Earlier this week, unions representing Lufthansa employees appealed to Angela Merkel’s government, calling for state aid to be contingent on maintaining jobs. But on Friday, Spohr implied that the airline’s workforce would have to shrink. “This pandemic will not be over until there is a vaccine available worldwide,” he said. “We were the first industry to be affected by this global crisis and aviation will be one of the last to leave it.” <br/>
