On Thursday morning, Lufthansa Group presented its full results for the year 2020. The company reports losses amounting to 5.5 billion Euros.
As an adjustment to the ongoing Coronavirus crisis, the airline group has announced plans to phase out eight long-haul aircraft types. This includes the already grounded Airbus A340-600 and Airbus A380 that will not return to service, according to CEO Carsten Spohr.
Other airplanes that are still flying but are now due for retirement over the next few years are Airbus A330-200, A340-300, Boeing 747-400, as well as 767-300 and 777-200 of Austrian Airlines. New types that will soon enter the fleets of the group airlines are Boeing 787-9, 777-9 and additional Airbus A350-900. It was not immediately clear whether Austrian Airlines would add Boeing 787. However, group CEO Spohr says that mainline Lufthansa will definitely receive some of the 40 ordered aircraft. Deliveries are set to start in 2022.
Furthermore, despite a significant global air cargo demand, Lufthansa Cargo plans to retire its remaining five McDonnell-Douglas MD-11 freighters by summer 2021 and switch to an all Boeing 777F fleet.
The Lufthansa Group expects to reach 40 to 50 percent of 2019 passenger numbers in the year 2021, while losing about 300 million Euros per month. The company has already reduced its fleet by 115 aircraft to 650 in total. 500 planes are currently grounded. About 20 percent of employees have been laid off and 10,000 more are to follow starting next year. Subsidiary airlines Germanwings and SunExpress Germany have been discontinued entirely last year.
Jakob Wert is an aviation journalist from Germany. He built up the website IFN.news and is the Editor-In-Chief of International Flight Network.
