Air traffic deficit: Lufthansa is decommissioning even more aircraft, including all A380s – News

• Lufthansa is hardening its austerity course.
• A larger number of aircraft will be closed than originally planned, the company announced.
• The fleet of Lufthansa and the other airlines in the group, including Switzerland, is expected to shrink by 150 aircraft to around 610 by the middle of the decade.
• The reason is the significantly slower recovery of air traffic from the corona crisis.

At least 150 aircraft from the Group’s fleet of 760 aircraft will no longer take off, the company said. That’s 50 more planes than planned; Lufthansa had previously planned to reduce the group’s fleet by 100 aircraft in the medium term.

Switzerland remains at low capacity during winter

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Due to current travel restrictions, Swiss expects to offer only about 30 to a maximum of 40 percent of the previous year’s capacities in the winter flight schedule.

In fact, Swiss had pursued the goal of being able to offer again around half of the scheduled flight schedule for December. “In the course of July we were still very confident that we could do it,” Swiss network chief Michael Trestl told a press meeting.

By September it should now be only 30 percent. It is clear that the winter flight schedule from November to March will be well below expectations, Trestl said. The new winter flight schedule will be presented next Tuesday (September 29).

In the current year, due to continued travel restrictions, only 20-30 percent of the pre-crisis level is expected flights. Originally, Lufthansa wanted to have half of its planes in the air again by the end of the year.

The A380 will no longer fly in the future

Among other things, the group is now canceling super jumbos of the A380 type in the long run if it cannot return them to manufacturer Airbus. Other A340-600 aircraft must remain permanently on the ground or withdraw entirely. To this end, writedowns of 1,100 million euros will be incurred in the current quarter.

There will also be fewer employees

In addition to reducing the fleet, CEO Carsten Spohr also plans to further reduce jobs to reduce costs. The number of full-time positions to be lost will exceed the previously announced 22,000. The number of dismissals for operational reasons will be limited by crisis packages with the unions.

After a slight recovery in the summer, the number of bookings fell again because with the increasing number of infections in Europe, more travel advisories and quarantine requirements were imposed. Lufthansa and the subsidiaries Swiss, Austrian Airlines and Brussels Airlines had to save themselves from bankruptcy with nine billion euros in state aid from the countries.