Lufthansa has reported its largest ever quarterly operating loss and said it can no longer rule out job cuts in its home country, despite having taken a E9b government bailout. The flag carrier, which has already said it would shed 22,000 staff and retire 100 aircraft, on Thursday announced a E1.7b operating loss for the three months to the end of June, as passenger traffic and its revenues collapsed. For the first six months of 2020, the total loss was E2.9b. Carsten Spohr, CE, warned that the group, like other airlines around the world, faced “enormous challenges” that meant it was “forced to make hard and painful cuts”. Lufthansa now expects it to take until 2024 for air travel demand to return to pre-coronavirus levels, echoing a more pessimistic outlook by Iata, the global air trade body, which last week warned it would take a year longer than previously predicted for passenger traffic to recover. Lufthansa has already reduced its workforce by 8,300 compared with a year ago. But on Thursday it warned that compulsory redundancies in Germany were now likely amid faltering talks with unions. Spohr said how deep the job cuts were in Germany would depend on negotiations with unions but he criticised the delay in reaching a conclusion. “It is far too slow for me . . . All our competitors in the world meanwhile have achieved agreements with their unions or without such have acted unilaterally with their unions. Even with the German government we were faster with this billion-euro rescue package than with our unions,” he said.<br/>
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United has begun removing seats from Embraer 175 regional aircraft, a strong indication that broad pilot furloughs are imminent. On Thursday, United began showing three different seat maps of the E175 on its website. The first seat map is the aircraft’s normal 76-seat, three-class configuration. Two other diagrams show a maximum of 70 seats, in two different three-class configurations. The changes come several weeks after United’s CCO Andrew Nocella said that the airline was drawing up plans to remove seats from its jets, a requirement under the carrier’s contract with its pilot union Air Line Pilots Association, International (ALPA). That contract requires United to “convert” 76-seat aircraft to 70-seat aircraft if it is forced to furlough pilots hired prior to when the contract was signed, a move that could diminish the economics of the jets. Regional carriers Mesa Airlines, Republic Airways and SkyWest Airlines operate a combined 172 of the type for United, according to Cirium fleets data. <br/>
Brussels Airlines said Thursday it had lost E182m in the first six months of 2020 because of the coronavirus crisis. First half revenues fell to E252m, 63% below the same period last year. Brussels Airlines transported two thirds fewer passengers between January and June as much of the world imposed anti-virus lockdowns. Brussels Airlines suspended all scheduled flights from 21 March, running only special flights to repatriate Belgian and German citizens, transport medical equipment to Africa and import medical masks from China. Commercial flying resumed on June 15 as European countries began to ease their social and economic lockdowns, but the airline's network remains limited. "Due to the still volatile and highly unpredictable situation worldwide, it is not possible to make forecasts for 2020 as a whole," the company warned.<br/>
Panama’s Copa Airlines said Thursday it has received government approval to restart flights in mid-August to about 10 destinations, after spending months with its entire fleet grounded due to the coronavirus pandemic. Copa CEO Pedro Heilbron said the restart will be limited and some of the destinations will include New York, Miami and Sao Paulo. Originally, Copa said it planned to restart flights only in September.<br/>