In the eyes of the General Director of Austrian Airlines, an industry collective agreement is not a universal solution. The competition would then fly in the employees from abroad.

Austrian Airlines boss Alexis von Hoensbroech is of the opinion that the company he heads is permanently saved with the aid package worth around 600 million euros. In conversation with the daily newspaper "The basic“He points out that Austrian Airlines was in the profit zone for seven years.

To obtain state aid, all shares and 40 aircraft owned by Austrian Airlines had to be pledged to the Republic of Austria. The manager commented on this as follows: "If you need money, you have to give everything you have."

Regarding the employee surplus, von Hoensbroech said to the “Standard”: “Our goal is 80 percent of the previous company size in 2022. From today's perspective, we would have 1100 employees too many. We are planning two years of short-time working, as long as there can be no layoffs, and we assume that we will achieve a large part of the reduction by 2022 through fluctuation. Just for comparison: Without the aid package, we would have slipped into a restructuring with self-administration or into real insolvency. During the restructuring we would have had to fire 2500 employees immediately, and most of the employees in the event of bankruptcy. The aid package is a major joint effort by employees, banks, government, suppliers, the airport, Lufthansa and taxpayers. We are very grateful for that. ”After the short-time work, the staff will do without an average of 15 percent. This also applies to the board of directors, whereby he himself will forego half of his total income.

When asked about the non-refund of tickets that could not be used due to the cancellations, the Austrian Airlines General Director said that it would be a double-digit million amount. “We got behind schedule because we received tens of thousands of applications and at the same time our employees were on short-time work. Now the service centers are working at full speed, we pay back millions every week. But it will still take many weeks until we have finished everything, ”said Alexis von Hoensbroech.

Austrian Airlines currently has no money for new aircraft. The prospect is that a fleet renewal could be tackled by 2030. They want to adhere to the federal government's three-hour rule: “If there is a train connection directly to Vienna Airport that is significantly less than three hours, we want to stop the route. This currently only applies to Salzburg – Vienna. As soon as we resume our flight operations, we will do so without Salzburg. We continue to fly Graz, Klagenfurt, Innsbruck. When the Semmering and Koralm tunnels are finished, Graz and Klagenfurt can also be hit. But that won't be the case until 2027. "

When asked about the struggle for the new Lauda collective agreement and a possible branch KV, Alexis von Hoensbroech told the “Standard” that “the effect is greatly overestimated”. He assumes that the carriers would then fly in cheaper employees from Poland or Bulgaria from outside. Furthermore: “On the other hand, I think it would be the right thing to do if minimum standards were to apply to personnel employed in Austria. Industry KV would be a route that cannot be found anywhere else. But the Austrian government is also the only one to introduce an anti-dumping law for flight tickets, i.e. a minimum price regulation. I welcome that very much, it can be a very powerful step. Because when it comes to flight ticket prices, there have recently been real excesses in our industry that are neither economically, ecologically nor politically wise. "