The dominant German airline Lufthansa announced that expenses would be slashed for 2020 since only 63 of the company’s fleet of 763 aircraft were still flying and just 5 percent of its usuall scheduled flights were taking off. In a smart move of solidarity, the company’s top management said they would take a 20 percent cut in their basic pay package for the year. At the same time, it announced that it would not distribute a dividend for 2019 in order to conserve cash. Lufthansa also announced that it had liquidity of roughly €4.3bn and that it had €800m in unused credit lines. The company’s passenger schedule has been shredded, cargo flights have gone mostly unchanged. Lufthansa said in a statement that it would be unable to provide a profit estimate for 2020 given the rapidly evolving situation over COVID-19.
