The German holiday airline TUIfly wants to reduce its fleet by around half because of the high pressure to save in the corona crisis. Management has presented plans to employees, a spokesman said. The aim is to cut the intended fleet of 39 Boeing 737 jets in half and to close several German locations such as Cologne, Bremen and Münster-Osnabrück. How many jobs will be lost will now become part of the discussions between management and employee representatives.
–
The union Ver.di, represented on the supervisory board, announced that no concrete decisions had yet been made – but “hard cuts” were expected. Nothing should change for customers at first: The current summer flight schedule from TUIfly the season that started late this year continues to apply. The company had also released the plan for 2021 ahead of time.
TUIfly has around 2,000 full-time positions, including 1,400 pilots and flight attendants. According to the news channel ntv, the jobs of 700 employees are on the verge, of which 230 are full-time. The group has not yet confirmed these figures.
–
It is about being able to utilize the reduced fleet throughout the year and not having too many planes in the winter when it is not too busy, it said. During this time, TUIfly also rents several jets to other providers. “The question is: what kind of aircraft structure do we need? We need to start this discussion now.”
Job cuts despite billion dollar loan?
Employee representatives are very critical of the cut plans – also in view of the fact that the tourism group TUI at the same time is supported with a billion dollar loan from the state development bank KfW to ensure solvency. “If there were to be a job cut financed by taxpayers’ money, it would be a good deal,” said a trade unionist from the dpa news agency. “It is still completely unclear how this should work.”
–
CEO Fritz Joussen had described the loan of 1.8 billion euros with a term until mid-2022 as crucial help for the company. The outflow of liquidity had recently been considerable due to the almost completely dormant business in the spring – according to a report by the online business magazine “Business Insider”, TUI should now consider further aid applications. According to the previous plans, 8,000 jobs are to be cut worldwide in the Group’s administration, talks with the social partners are ongoing.
–
As with other airlines, TUIfly’s business has practically collapsed due to the corona crisis. Up to seven of the TUIfly machines have been used for the Lufthansa subsidiary Eurowings. These contracts expire, however, and Eurowings itself also downsizes the fleet. TUIfly now wants to “concentrate more on the pure TUI business”, as it was said. The airline is mainly used as a feeder for guests of its own group offers such as package tours or cruises, the dependency on external operators is to be further reduced. TUI also negotiated with the aircraft manufacturer Boeing that the group would only have to accept the new 737 Max aircraft ordered later.
–
TUIfly plans to resume holiday flight operations on June 17. The originally planned start of an own long-haul offer is now on hold. TUIfly actually wanted to bring vacationers to Mexico and the Dominican Republic with two Boeing 787 “Dreamliners” from November. In view of the corona crisis, however, this is currently not sensible, the company said.
–
