“We are now at the beginning of a winter that will be hard and challenging for our industry “, said Carsten Spohr, CEO of Lufthansa, adding: “We aspire to remain the leading European airline group following the end of the crisis”.
The German aviation giant, one of the largest airlines in Europe, said it lost 2 billion euros between July and September due to the slump in travel demand. The flights stop all over the world due to the spread of Covid19 reduced the number of passengers; in the same period the German group had a profit of 1.2 billion euros last year.
The current situation led to fewer seats and fewer aircraft in the sky, Lufthansa said that it will fly at 25% of its capacity until the end of 2020. In the period from January to September 2020 the company carried 32.2 million passengers, which correspond to only 29% of passengers in 2019. Teruel is the largest aircraft storage in Europe where the airlines leave the airplanes they no longer need, in April this storage began receiving aircraft from German airline Lufthansa.
The German company expects to lose 350 million euros per month, until the end of December. The pandemic has weakened its business outlook and therefore the company announced the cut of thousands of jobs in order to reduce costs; about 22,000 jobs across the entire Lufthansa group: Swiss, Eurowings, Brussels Airlines and Austrian Airlines. Its fleet will also be reduced by at least 100 aircraft. Another action taken to reduce costs was to close its low-cost airline Germanwings. The German government helped the firm and took a 20% stake in the company, which it plans to sell by the end of 2023.
Lufthansa group seems to be very determined in facing and overcoming the current crisis in a brilliant way. Carsten Spohr said: “People around the world have a great desire to travel again soon. Together with our partners, we are ready and will do everything we can to fulfil this desire as quickly as possible and with the highest health and safety standards. The important thing now is to ensure health protection and freedom of travel, for example by means of widespread rapid tests”.
