With most airlines now down to skeleton flights and speculation rife about the future recovery of the industry, Lufthansa is answering some of the questions for itself by shedding one of its subsidiaries and a significant number of planes.
Germanwings, once seen as a discount domestic and leisure airline, and since largely folded into the Eurowings subsidiary, will disappear altogether. For the past few years, it has had a staff of 1,400, but its flights have operated under the Eurowings brand.
Lufthansa did not say immediately how many of the jobs will disappear, but it did give details of its fleet reductions, which will come mostly from planes operated under the Lufthansa brand. The cuts include 31 A320s, ten from Eurowings, five 747s and seven A340s.
In addition to the Germanwings move and the fleet cuts, Lufthansa has put 87,000 of its staff, more than 60 percent of the total on shorter-hour schemes with government benefits.
