No agreement with pilots: Lufthansa is examining the establishment of a new airline

Created: 03/01/2022, 14:42

By: Patricia Huber

Lufthansa is currently examining the establishment of a new airline.

© Boris Roessler/dpa

After several days of unsuccessful discussion about various collective bargaining issues, Lufthansa has now announced a new step.

She is examining the establishment of a new airline.

Frankfurt/Main – Lufthansa* threatens its regular pilots with the establishment of a new airline that could take over essential tasks from the previous core company.

A separate flight operation (AOC) under German law is planned, according to a letter to the workforce that became known in Frankfurt on Tuesday.

This new operation should handle feeder flights for the Munich and Frankfurt hubs and provide jobs for the previously unemployed pilots of the discontinued subsidiary Germanwings.

Lufthansa: Discussions on collective bargaining issues without a breakthrough

A company spokeswoman confirmed that a four-day meeting on various collective bargaining issues with the Vereinigung Cockpit union (VC) ended last week without a breakthrough.

However, further meetings have been arranged.

At the end of this month, the agreements on short-time work for around 5,000 pilots at Lufthansa and Lufthansa Cargo will expire.

The group had declared a few weeks ago that it wanted to dispense with the initially threatened redundancies, despite a surplus of staff.

However, this required agreements on the pilots of Germanwings and Lufthansa Cargo.

So far, VC has always fiercely resisted attempts to outsource its core business to other, lower-tariff flight operations.

Nevertheless, the business of Eurowings and the long-haul subsidiary Eurowings Discover was expanded.

Lufthansa: Partial agreements reached in talks

According to Lufthansa, partial agreements were reached last week.

The flight instructors from the downsized Bremen commercial pilot school are to be taken over by Lufthansa.

A severance program at the freight company still needs to be discussed.