Germany and Lufthansa are considering cutting back the country’s E9b aid package as the airline group closes in on additional commitments from Switzerland, Austria and Belgium, people familiar with the discussion said. The government is ready to lower the burden for Germany’s taxpayers and is weighing whether to reduce an earmarked E3b of loans to Lufthansa from the state-run Kreditanstalt fuer Wiederaufbau fund, the people said. The German airline, whose empire includes former national carriers in the three other countries, is eager to keep its bailout costs as low as possible, the people said. No decision has been taken as Lufthansa is in ongoing talks to finalize the packages with the three other countries, and discussions with the European Union, shareholders and staff are ongoing, the people said. Lufthansa declined to comment. A spokeswoman from Germany’s finance ministry also declined to comment.<br/>
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Lufthansa’s biggest shareholder, German billionaire Heinz Hermann Thiele, has reached out to Berlin politicians for talks, Handelsblatt said, the latest step in a standoff over the airline’s E9b bailout. Lufthansa shareholders need to approve the rescue package but Thiele, who has ammassed a 15% Lufthansa stake, has criticised bailout terms and is raising more cash by selling down E760m worth of shares in rail and commercial vehicle supplier Knorr-Bremse. The entrepreneur is against Germany taking a stake of up to 20% in the airline, terms which Lufthansa and the German government have agreed to as part of the planned rescue of the company. Lufthansa fears that Thiele’s lack of approval for a bailout deal could bring down the rescue package at next week’s Annual General Meeting on June 25.<br/>
Rules for Air NZ international crew returning home have tightened up after two cases of Covid-19 were discovered, but they are not the problem, says aviation expert Irene King. Following Ministry of Health requirements, Air NZ international crew had largely been exempt from quarantine since the coronavirus lockdown. Now they have to self-isolate at home for two days, take a Covid-19 test, and continue to self-isolate until the results were known, if they had stayed for longer than two nights overseas. Crew can fly domestically to get home to self-isolate. The Ministry of Health updated its requirements for international air crew on June 16, the day two new cases of coronavirus emerged. Anyone flying between Australia and New Zealand must now also wear a facemask to stop the spread of the coronavirus, an about-turn on earlier advice that face masks for air travel were neither recommended nor required but not discouraged. King said the Ministry of Health saw Air NZ crew as much less risky than anyone else crossing the border. Flying was not the issue because the air was clean on planes, and the risk was also very small at foreign ports, assuming crew followed the quarantine rules. "They're coming out of quarantine in a hotel through a terminal to an aircraft," King said. "It's a known hotel, and they get carted to and from the terminal, and they're whisked through the terminal to the crew room, so it's not like you're just wandering through the terminals. To assess the risk you'd have to have some data - Air New Zealand must be monitoring their crew coming off these flights."<br/>