Lufthansa Group: Flight operations will be reduced again, administration will be temporarily closed
Lufthansa will "shut down its business operations even further during the winter of 2020/21 and put as many areas as possible into winter mode from mid-December 2020," the company's management announced internally in a circular. The current situation in which the company finds itself is "tantamount to a lockdown in its effects." It also states that Lufthansa wants to reduce costs further. This is to be achieved by reducing flight operations even further than previously announced and temporarily shutting down parts of the administration. Most recently, the group announced that it expects capacity to be a maximum of 25 percent of the previous year's level. This figure is now to be revised downwards again across the group. According to the circular, demand is said to have fallen sharply and new travel restrictions and quarantine requirements are having a correspondingly negative impact. Although the previous savings programs have borne fruit, so that the airline is now "only" recording a loss of half a million euros per hour, "the dramatic nature of the situation has not changed." Carsten Spohr and his management team assume that the number of passengers carried in the winter will fall to a maximum of 20 percent of the previous year's figure. The result of this is that around 125 aircraft will be shut down again at Lufthansa, Swiss, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines and Eurowings. These were actually supposed to be used in the 2020/21 winter flight schedule, as the airline had originally expected a recovery and expected that it would be able to operate around half of the regular offer. However, the booking numbers are dramatically below the plan, which is why a few days ago the
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