The airline sees better prospects for its business again in the long term and ends its downsizing course. Most pilots can stay on board – even with the core brand.
Contrary to earlier announcements, Lufthansa no longer wants to lay off pilots in the spring. The global recovery in demand will lead to significantly better prospects in the cockpit in the long term, the company justified the step on Friday in Frankfurt.
Operational redundancies can therefore also be avoided for the Lufthansa core brand. The group, which has since been rescued by the state, is still suffering from the corona slump and is only flying around half of the passengers it was used to before the crisis in the current quarter.
There is a severance program
The Lufthansa Group employs around 11,000 pilots, around 5,000 of them with the core brand. During the Corona crisis, the MDax group announced that it would reduce its workforce from around 140,000 to up to 100,000 people worldwide. According to information from the “Handelsblatt”, the contraction course should now be ended at a level of almost 107,000 employees.
According to reports, more than 400 Lufthansa captains have decided to leave the service early in exchange for severance pay. Lufthansa announced on Friday that it would also offer this option to co-pilots. There should also be a volunteer program at the actually successful Lufthansa Cargo. In addition, collective part-time models could solve the existing excess staff.
Basic agreements on this are still pending with the “Vereinigung Cockpit” (VC) union, with whose collective bargaining committee you want to go to a multi-day retreat in the coming week. HR Director Michael Niggemann described it as a “great success” to have averted the redundancies for operational reasons. You worked hard for that. VC collective bargaining board member Marcel Gröls spoke of a “positive signal”.
Pilot training resumes
Nevertheless, the company expects further savings from regular pilots. In other group airlines such as Eurowings and Eurowings Discover, new hires are advertised at lower tariff conditions. The future of a little more than 200 pilots of the liquidated subsidiary Germanwings is still unclear. 80 of her colleagues have already been transferred to Lufthansa in Munich.
Lufthansa also announced that it would resume pilot training in the summer, which had been interrupted in the meantime. Unlike before, there should no longer be courses that almost automatically lead to a hiring at the core brand. The uniform training goal is now the generally recognized commercial pilot license ATP, with which the graduates can apply to employers inside and outside the Lufthansa Group. Training locations are the flight school sold to United in Goodyear/Arizona, Rostock-Laage and, for theory, Bremen and Zurich.
Source: Stern
Jane Stock is a technology author, who has written for 24 Hours World. She writes about the latest in technology news and trends, and is always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to improve his audience’s experience.
