On Friday, the management of the airline Lauda not only registered the flight personnel at the Vienna base for termination with the Lower Austria Employment Service, but also the 70 employees at the headquarters in Schwechat. Meanwhile, Die Die Fliegend is already planning a demonstration in front of the headquarters of the Austrian Federation of Trade Unions.

In an interview with Aviation.Direct, managing director Andreas Gruber confirmed that the office staff at the company headquarters had also been terminated as a “precaution”. At the same time, he confirmed that the Airbus A320 aircraft currently stationed in Vienna will be relocated to the bases in Palma de Mallorca, Düsseldorf and Stuttgart. These are to remain in operation and are not included in the measures. The company will realign itself and the number of employees required in the Schwechat office will also be based on this. Ryanair wants to hold on to both the company and the AOC and flight operations. Only from Vienna will no longer fly Lauda, ​​but Ryanair (and other sister companies).

The decision not to sign the collective agreement by the Vida union was extremely controversial on Friday. On the one hand there was a lot of praise for the fact that the employee representatives did not allow themselves to be blackmailed, on the other hand it was criticized that the negotiations with the WKO were started too late and the jobs were literally "sacrificed".

For the German airline Austrian Airlines, according to Federal Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, the government is currently working on a special solution for short-time work, which could be continued until 2022. Finance Minister Gernot Blümel confirmed that there are corresponding plans. This is remarkable in that the Lufthansa subsidiary is neither systemically relevant, nor has a final decision been made on the granting of possible state aid. In several circulars, the Lauda management alleged that the union of the ailing Austrian Airlines wanted to provide support by eliminating the competitor. This was sharply denied by Vida and, among other things, it was based on unacceptable conditions that were contained in the collective agreement that the Lauda management wanted to have signed.