Lufthansa boss Carsten Spohr spent the last few days in his holiday home on the Italian Mediterranean island of Sardinia, where he and his fellow board members worked out a rescue plan for the group. Today, Monday, the general director of Germany's largest airline will meet the supervisory board, to which he has to answer questions.

The situation at Lufthansa and most other airlines around the world is fatal, because demand is currently lower than ever before. There are hardly any new bookings and certainly no long-term bookings, which are particularly important for the airlines, as the income can be worked with. The costs are there, but hardly any fresh money comes into the coffers. The billion dollar government loan could also be used up at some point. According to Süddeutschem Rundfunk, there are no longer 22.000 jobs at the crane in acute danger, but 28.000, i.e. 6.000 jobs are now also at risk. Lufthansa is therefore on the verge of a radical downsizing, which of course also has to be discussed with the Supervisory Board.

For the group headed by Carsten Spohr, the current crisis is probably the lowest point in the company's history. Incidentally, today's Lufthansa was only founded after the Second World War and, at least from a legal point of view, has no connection with the pre-war Lufthansa, which from today's perspective behaved quite dishonorably during the Nazi era. Nevertheless, the corona crisis is also an opportunity for the crane, because you can carry out a radical restructuring of the group including a major reduction in staff and thus position yourself much leaner. Such plans have been around for a long time, but so far the respective CEOs have always failed due to fierce resistance from the unions, above all VC, UFO and Verdi.

Further details have not yet been communicated, but what is known is that many people will lose their jobs. The first steps have already been taken with the closure of Germanwings and SunExpress Germany. The former subsidiary Luftfahrtgesellschaft Walter can also be counted indirectly, because it lost all ACMI orders due to the corona pandemic, had to return the fleet and file for bankruptcy.

Spohr quantified in a webcast that Lufthansa is still losing around one million euros every 90 minutes. This cannot go on in the long run, because you have a maximum of 18 months to get back on an economically stable footing. The loans granted by Germany, Austria, Belgium and Switzerland would then be used up. But the more potential customers are reluctant to travel, the faster it could go. The many travel restrictions imposed by governments, some of which are difficult to understand, do not make things any easier for the Lufthansa Group. Often new guidelines or even entry bans are introduced overnight and passengers can then no longer actually use the route. However, it seems homemade that many potential customers prefer to book at short notice, if at all, because the delayed ticket refunds have massively damaged trust. The logic is clear: Why should you buy a flight ticket in the long term when it is absolutely unclear whether you can even enter the country due to official regulations and then wait forever for money in the worst case? The entire industry has probably done itself a disservice.

The slump, which Lufthansa has now recorded, is severe. Up to and including August there was growth compared to April 2020, but now, in September, demand has collapsed. This has to do with the fact that the main holiday season is over and many business travelers continue to use Skype and Co. The consequences are serious: Spohr quantified that only 20 percent of the regular demand is currently recorded and that advance bookings for October 2020 are even less than ten percent of the usual value. The fact that Germany wants to quarantine returnees from risk areas defined by the Robert Koch Institute for five days from October 2020 does not at all have a beneficial effect on the booking behavior of potential customers. As a result, the Lufthansa Group has to cut costs further as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, this will inevitably also be at the expense of the staff.