Lufthansa to mothball A380 superjumbos!

FRANKFURT: Lufthansa is to cut at least 150 planes from its fleet of 760, mothball its A380 superjumbos and slash even more full-time jobs than the 22,000 already announced, the Frankfurt-based airline announced on Monday.

The airline, which has had to surrender two seats on its supervisory board to German government appointees after receiving a bailout worth 9 billion euros ($10.6 billion) from the state, had previously said it would cut just 100 planes.
Continuing travel restrictions over the rest of the year would lead to the airline offering only up to 30 per cent of the services it offered last year, Lufthansa said. It had earlier hoped to have half its planes in the air by the end of the year.

Planes from the A340-600 series will remain grounded or be removed entirely from the fleet, leading to a book adjustment of 1.1 billion euros over the current quarter.
Lufthansa’s lucrative long-haul routes have been particularly badly hit by the novel coronavirus pandemic, with flights still at a small fraction of last year’s.
By contrast, its cargo operations have held up.
Complex and ever-changing restrictions on travellers have badly impacted the airline, along with its subsidiaries Eurowings, Swiss, Austrian and Brussels.
According to the latest figures, of the more than 138,000 employees at the start of the year, 128,000 still have jobs. Staff abroad are feeling the brunt of the cuts, while there is as yet no agreement with the unions on redundancies in Germany. — dpa