Contract law | After Lufthansa posted another billion-euro loss last year, the airline is hoping for better times this year, even if the consequences of the war in Ukraine are not yet foreseeable.
Like all companies in the aviation industry, Lufthansa has been hit hard by the coronavirus crisis. Even if the management does not yet wish to issue a profit forecast, CEO Carsten Spohr assumes that air traffic will experience a strong upturn this year. After a weak first quarter, bookings for Easter and summer vacations almost reached the pre-crisis level of 2019. The Lufthansa Group, which also includes the airlines Eurowings, Swiss, Austrian and Brussels Airlines, is aiming to offer 70 percent of its pre-crisis capacity in passenger flights this year after only 40 percent last year. While a loss of 5.5 billion euros was recorded in the first year of coronavirus, this figure was 2.3 billion euros in 2021. While the network airlines posted a high operating loss, the cargo division with Lufthansa Cargo achieved a record profit of 1.5 billion euros. Lufthansa Technik and Catering also posted a profit.
The airline was only saved from collapse by substantial state aid and had to let go of a total of 30,000 employees without any compulsory redundancies in Germany. This means that the Group still had 105,000 employees worldwide at the end of 2021. Overall, personnel costs have been structurally reduced by ten percent and are expected to be around 15 to 20 percent below pre-crisis levels by 2020. According to the CEO, the Lufthansa Group is now more efficient and sustainable than before the coronavirus crisis and wants to remain one of the five largest airlines in the world in the future.
Source of information: Wirtschaftswoche.de from 03.03.2022
