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The Frankfurt cargo crisis spirit has long since vanished:
The Lufthansa subsidiary wants to get rid of a few pilots
Photo: Fredrik Von Erichsen / DPA
At the Lufthansa subsidiary Cargo, a dispute between employers and pilots is coming to a head.
After the boom in the crisis year, up to 160 Lufthansa Cargo pilots are threatened with premature retirement, reports the Internet portal "Aero.de".
The airline is said to have already advised younger first officers to look for new jobs.
The background to this is the special agreements that were made between Lufthansa and the pilots during the pandemic.
The booming freight traffic was only made possible with the regulatory agreement on expanded deployment options for the staff.
Since Lufthansa Cargo now wants to cut staff, the pilots did not want to extend the special regulations any further - Lufthansa Cargo is threatened with short-term flight cancellations.
After a crisis meeting, the parties at least agreed to keep the special rules in force for another week in order to come to a contractual solution.
"Everything is still going well with us," said a cargo spokeswoman on Monday.
With a turnover of 2.8 billion euros and 4,400 employees, Lufthansa Cargo is currently the star of the group.
While passenger aviation burns billions in Corona mode, the cargo subsidiary is creating record numbers, also because of the general freight boom.
An operating profit of over 770 million euros (adjusted EBIT) was generated in 2020, a dream margin of 28 percent.
Ryanair plans to hire 2,000 pilots
Overall, 1500 of the around 5000 pilot and co-pilot jobs at Lufthansa are at risk due to the corona pandemic.
The airline is currently negotiating a socially acceptable redundancy plan with employees.
The jobs are secured until spring 2022.
If you want to reorient yourself now, you should take a look at Ireland. The low-cost airline Ryanair plans to hire 2,000 pilots there over the next three years. The company announced on Monday that it is primarily looking for junior staff. Vacant captaincy positions are mainly awarded internally. Training courses are scheduled to begin this year.
The background to the new hires is the acquisition of more than 200 Boeing 737s of the latest generation.
Ryanair wants to have completed the recovery from the corona crisis by 2024.
Until then, the low-cost airline wants to break the 200 million passenger mark annually.
Ryanair boss O'Leary has so far brought the low-cost airline through the crisis lightly and is optimistic about the future despite a loss of billions for the past financial year (around one billion euros).
mg / dpa-afx