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- 2019 was another record year for Lufthansa with the highest sales in the company’s history, as CEO Carsten Spohr said at the Annual General Meeting.
- Passenger transportation has now dropped 99 percent. The crisis is “bitter, devastating. It hurts,” said Carsten Spohr.
- There would be intensive talks with the federal government about state support. State involvement, however, is not an option, says Carsten Spohr. This is also the opinion of the federal government.
Lufthansa has minimized its passenger operations and only flies less than one percent of passengers. The daily number fell from an average of 350,000 per day to around 3,000. Of a total of 760 aircraft, 700 are currently grounded.
Despite massive short-term work, many fixed costs continue to run, so according to CEO Carsten Spohr, the company loses a million euros an hour.
The Lufthansa general meeting took place exclusively on the Internet. However, the group’s decision makers were in one room.
lufthansagroup.com
Try to keep operating costs to a minimum. Lufthansa will not pay dividends this year. In view of the situation, this was “without alternative,” he said at the general meeting.
Lufthansa now needs state support. “But we don’t need any state administration,” Spohr said, adding: “Even in the Berlin federal government, nobody wants a state-controlled Lufthansa.”
State aid negotiations still ongoing
Negotiations on the precise structure of state aid between silent interest-bearing participations and direct participation still continued on Tuesday. Fund companies like Deka and the Union Investment Cooperative supported CEO Spohr’s course against excessive government control before the meeting.
At the Annual General Assembly, you cannot enter into continuous and confidential negotiations on state aid in Germany, Spohr continued.
Lufthansa also announced at the Annual General Meeting that flights will start slowly again in June. Thereafter there will be a first phase of expansion, with a notable expansion of flight connections. Expansion will take place very slowly. A “new balance” in the aviation industry is not expected until 2023.
