[ad_1]
Since the beginning of the year, the Swiss parent company has recorded losses of more than four billion euros. The board of directors cut costs considerably, but that was not enough. Now you have to save even more and you have to turn off more machines for the time being.
Lufthansa wants to close 125 planes that were actually destined for the already greatly reduced winter flight program.
The renewed escalation of the corona pandemic and the expansion of travel restrictions are putting the Lufthansa Group even more in a mess. The group loses around 1 million euros in two hours, that is, 12 million euros a day. That’s still a huge money-burning rate, despite the company losing up to € 1 million per hour at the start of the pandemic. For the winter semester, management expects the number of passengers to likely be less than 20% of the previous year’s value, as indicated in a letter from the board of directors to employees on Sunday, which NZZ has received. By historical comparison, the company is at the level of the mid-1970s. At the time, Lufthansa had around 80 “cross-country aircraft” in use.
Divisions should go into hibernation
In view of this development, the group, which also includes the Swiss, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines and Eurowings brands, has to further reduce costs. 125 aircraft, which were actually destined for the already greatly reduced winter flight program, will be decommissioned again. The company wants to put many areas in “winter mode” from mid-December and, for example, close the Group’s administrative headquarters with the exception of a few employees. This is the so-called Lufthansa Aviation Center (LAC), which is the group’s headquarters directly at Frankfurt airport. The actual corporate headquarters is in Cologne.
In Germany, the management also wants to further concentrate flight operations in Frankfurt am Main. To this end, four more A350s can be moved from Munich to the Main. The concentration makes it easier for the company to fill the few long-haul planes still flying abroad. Long-distance traffic has largely stopped. At the Swiss subsidiary Swiss, the chief executive of Airbus A320 could be taken out of service, it is said. At the moment, Boeing 777 aircraft will no longer take off on Austrian Airlines. Overall, the company expects the group’s airlines to be able to offer up to a quarter of the previous year’s capacity, some brands would even be significantly lower.
Loss of four billion euros in nine months
A few days ago, the group announced its first figures for the third quarter. Subsequently, before taxes and interest, a loss of almost € 1.3 billion was incurred, which was at least significantly less than the loss of € 1.7 billion in the second quarter. However, in the course of the year to date, the group has already recorded a loss of more than 4,000 million euros. Thanks to generous state aid from the Group’s various countries of origin, liquidity at the end of September was still a good 10 billion euros. The company announced the third savings package about a month ago. This included, among other things, reducing the fleet by 150 instead of 100 aircraft and eliminating 27,000 full-time positions instead of the previously announced 22,000 positions.
You can contact business editor Michael Rasch Twitter, LinkedIn and Xing, as well as NZZ Frankfurt on Facebook.
[ad_2]
