Lufthansa boss Carsten Spohr does not want the high-earning long-haul captains who have so far flown on the Airbus A380 “not to expect” the short-time work allowance of around 5.000 euros. This will be topped up to around 15.000 euros per month from state aid, the CEO confirmed to Welt am Sonntag.

Spohr explained to the newspaper that the remuneration with pure short-time allowance “more than halves”, because the majority of the pilot's salaries would be above the ceiling. “We cannot and do not want to expect our pilots to do this,” Spohr told World on Sunday. The largest airline in Germany is therefore taking money from the nine billion dollar government loan and increasing the salaries of the pilots so that they receive 5.000 euros per month instead of 15.000 euros.

Business was extremely miserable in December 2020. Spohr explains that they carried “less than ten percent of the passengers compared to the previous year”. By the end of the year, 29.000 employees should have left the company. The manager says that mathematically it would be one in five full-time positions. “But that cannot be full-time jobs in all areas. We just have to distribute the work differently, ”the Lufthansa boss told Welt.

Spohr assumes that part-time models will be needed until at least the mid-2020s. Further cost savings are to be achieved because Lufthansa assumes that the recovery in the industry will drag on for a very long time. We are therefore negotiating with the trade unions about solutions and models that will be applied beyond 2021.