The Lufthansa Group closed the second quarter of the 2020 financial year with a net loss of 1,5 billion euros. Numerous measures to reduce costs could only have compensated for the decline in sales due to the consequences of the corona pandemic to a small extent.

Now redundancies for operational reasons are no longer excluded. The course of the negotiations with the collective bargaining partners would not be satisfactory, even against the background of international market developments, and for Germany the conclusion of crisis agreements should no longer be realistic.

Group boss Carsten Spohr stated in the course of the presentation of the financial figures hailed by the Corona crisis that he does not expect the level of 2024 to be reached again before 2019. Therefore a comprehensive restructuring program has been decided under the project title “ReNew”. This provides for the reduction of around 22.000 full-time jobs.

The group-wide fleet is also to be reduced by “at least 100 machines”. The austerity program also includes a reduction in staff, which is to be implemented initially at Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines and Swiss. In the next step, Lufthansa itself is to follow in Germany. The group of companies currently employs around 129.400 people worldwide. The liquidity level as of June 30, 2020 was 2,8 billion euros. If the rescue package is taken into account, it would now stand at almost 12 billion euros.