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Lufthansa shuts down Germanwings
Lufthansa is shutting down operations of its struggling German budget affiliate Germanwings, partly in response to the coronavirus. The German airline also said it was decommissioning 18 planes in its fleet and would withdraw 11 Airbus A320 jets from short-haul operations. "The Executive Board of Deutsche Lufthansa AG does not expect the aviation industry to return to pre-coronavirus crisis levels very quickly," the airline said in a statement. "According to its assessment, it will take months until the global travel restrictions are completely lifted and years until the worldwide demand for air travel returns to pre-crisis levels." Though Lufthansa discontinued the Germanwings brand and replaced it with Eurowings in 2015, Germanwings had continued as a wet-lease operator for Eurowings under its own flight numbers.Trade unions had warned of its likely closure even before Lufthansa grounded in the region of 95% of all regular flights in response to the coronavirus. |
Originally Posted by air bubble
(Post 10742731)
Source: Deutsche Welle, 7 April
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Lufthansa has been very good at doing the hub carrier of Germany. Everything else, not so much
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LH have made an announcement earlier that they are now "retiring" 5x B744s, several A346s and some A380s not know if they will every fly for LH again
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Lufthansa :
- 6 A380 - 7 A346 - 5 B744 Lufthansa Cityline: - 3 A343 Eurowings: -10 A320 Germanwings: ceased OPS Swiss, Brussels, Austrian, Sunexpress: TBN |
It sounds like Eurowings will not serve long range flights anymore.
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The 6 A380s were due to be returned to Airbus anyway.
Swiss will be deferring new aircraft orders and reviewing the planned fleet retirements. |
It sounds like Eurowings will not serve long range flights anymore
I thought that was already on the cards prior to the present crisis? |
Originally Posted by Pistonprop
(Post 10742985)
I thought that was already on the cards prior to the present crisis?
When they say retired x planes what does that entails? I'm sure those are not owned outright. Can you go out your leasing agreements like that? Force majeure? |
LH owns most of their fleet. The retirements you see announced were already planned for 2022-23 and have been preponed by about two years.
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Interesting that they plan to retire 6 A380s but (eventually) keep flying their 747-8s.
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Some of those LH A380s are still flying repatriation flights, and have been transiting BKK to/from Australia and New Zealand in recent days.
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Originally Posted by tdracer
(Post 10744089)
Interesting that they plan to retire 6 A380s but (eventually) keep flying their 747-8s.
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For the moment, even the 1400 people from Germanwings are not laid off. The company is trying to get the captains with a Lufthansa contract back to mainline, and the (mostly) FOs a job in Eurowings. That may result in a 60-70% forced parttime contract for the entire company.
naturally, the longer covid19 stops airlines from flying, the bigger the chances that the Germanwings crew will be laid off |
Originally Posted by sekmeth
(Post 10744563)
For the moment, even the 1400 people from Germanwings are not laid off. The company is trying to get the captains with a Lufthansa contract back to mainline, and the (mostly) FOs a job in Eurowings. That may result in a 60-70% forced parttime contract for the entire company.
naturally, the longer covid19 stops airlines from flying, the bigger the chances that the Germanwings crew will be laid off With the announced fleet reductions in the LH groups it seems hard to avoid redundancies, or group wide part time. Especially if the crisis continues for more than half a year. |
Anybody believes they came up with this plan in the last 14 days? I don't. Not in any german big corporation and especially not Lufthansa.
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Originally Posted by Denti
(Post 10744886)
With the announced fleet reductions in the LH groups it seems hard to avoid redundancies, or group wide part time. Especially if the crisis continues for more than half a year. Happy to be retired from LH and I am terribly sad for all my colleagues at LH and all other airlines worldwide. |
Originally Posted by BDAttitude
(Post 10745101)
Anybody believes they came up with this plan in the last 14 days? I don't. Not in any german big corporation and especially not Lufthansa.
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Originally Posted by Denti
(Post 10744886)
Well, not bad for the moment. Are they on Kurzarbeit though? Which is not technically laid off, but basically without current work.
With the announced fleet reductions in the LH groups it seems hard to avoid redundancies, or group wide part time. Especially if the crisis continues for more than half a year. |
Who will take advantage?
The real question in all of this I see who will take advantage when things get back to normal? I can only assume Lufthansa have done this to preserve short-term liquidity, but those with more liquidity are likely to seize on the opportunity this leaves in a sustainable market.
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Originally Posted by sekmeth
(Post 10745751)
no Kurzarbeit, because they are not allowed to fire people on kurzarbeit
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Originally Posted by Denti
(Post 10745820)
Well, time to save the extra pay they receive then, get as high a buffer in the remaining time as they possibly can, makes surviving on the roughly €2k unemployment pay easier. Don't wish that on anyone, just some experience from the past...
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