Lufthansa, Europe’s second-largest commercial airline by passenger numbers, has announced it has come to a short-term agreement with Vereinigung Cockpit (VC), the airline pilots’ union, with regard to crisis measures required to deal with the effects the COVID-19 pandemic is having on the industry.
Those pilots covered by the agreement fly for Lufthansa, Lufthansa Cargo, Lufthansa Aviation Training and a number of Germanwings pilots. According to Lufthansa, top-up payments for short-time working compensation benefits and employer contributions to the pension scheme will be reduced from September onwards, while collective wage increases negotiated for 2020 will be postponed until January 2021. Additionally, there will be no pilot redundancies until March 2021, but overcapacity that will likely stretch well beyond that period will probably lead to a corresponding reduction in working hours and salary for the period of the COVID-19 crisis.
Lufthansa has additionally announced that for all German flight operations, it will cease hiring new pilots from outside the Group while there is cockpit staff overcapacity. This will equally apply to the cockpit staffing of tourist-oriented flight operations – which will be open to pilots from Sun Express Deutschland and the German base of Brussels Airlines who have flown tourist routes over the past few years.
