Lufthansa is shutting down its budget Germanwings subsidiary and getting rid of dozens of planes to weather the impact of the coronavirus crisis.
Demand for flights has plummeted as countries around the world close their borders and restrict movement in a bid to stem the pandemic, plunging even large airlines like Lufthansa into an unprecedented crisis.
“Germanwings flight operations will be discontinued,” Lufthansa said in a statement after a meeting of the group’s executive board. It did not give details about job losses, but said talks with unions “are to be arranged quickly”.
The group, which also owns Eurowings, SWISS, Brussels and Austrian Airlines, said it would decommission or phase out more than 40 of its 763 aircraft in a bid to cut costs.
A statement posted on the Lufthansa group website said:
The Executive Board of Deutsche Lufthansa AG does not expect the aviation industry to return to pre-coronavirus crisis levels very quickly. 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. Based on this evaluation, today the Executive Board has decided on extensive measures to reduce the capacity of flight operations and administration long term.
Along with grounding the Germanwings service, Lufthansa said it would be reducing capacity at its German hub airports in Frankfurt and Munich, due to an expected reduction in passengers.
It will also whittle down fleet sizes for the flagship carrier Lufthansa and subsidiary Eurowings.
The fleet cuts include permanently decommissioning six super-jumbo Airbus A380s, seven long-haul A340-600s, and five Boeing 747-400s. For short haul operations, 11 Airbus A320s will be taken out of service.
Low-cost carrier Eurowings will decommission an additional 10 short-haul Airbus A320s.
