Lufthansa is negotiating state aid because of the corona crisis – it is now clear how much money the sharply reduced passenger numbers will cost the company due to the pandemic. “In total, we therefore lose one million euros of our liquidity reserve every hour – day and night, week after week and probably also month after month,” said Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr in a video message to the employees on Wednesday. The airline currently carries fewer than 3,000 passengers instead of 350,000 a day.
The pandemic meant “the biggest challenge in our history,” said Spohr. Lufthansa is “in the fight” for its future line-up.
Lufthansa could face the crisis with financial reserves of more than four billion euros, but the group only recorded a “fraction of the revenue”. It is therefore foreseeable that the company will only survive the crisis with state support. However, Spohr was optimistic that the talks will end positively.
The end for Germanwings
According to Spohr, 7,000 employees are affected by the measures that the company wants to use to reduce its costs, including 1,400 at the subsidiary Germanwings, which will cease operations. Talks were already in progress with the employee representatives to offer as many employees as possible an alternative job in the group. To do this, however, new employment models, such as part-time work, are essential. “Solidarity and flexibility are now required here,” said Spohr.
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The savings should also be contributed to the fact that the executive board will not be filled again after the resignation of CFO Ulrik Svensson, who left the board for health reasons. The tasks would be redistributed among the remaining six board members, Spohr said.
As announced by Lufthansa, the IT, digital and innovation department under the leadership of Thorsten Dirks “will be expanded to include significant parts of the finance department and renamed to digital and finance”. Other parts are assigned to the HR and Legal department under Michael Niggemann and Christina Foerster’s Customer & Corporate Responsibility department.
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