The Game of Bankruptcy

This morning, if you view ARD news, there is a new twist to the Lufthansa chatter over bankruptcy.

In recent weeks, with the airline in serious 'freefall'.....there's been a serious amount of talk over Lufthansa having to declare bankruptcy because of massive cuts in flights.

The latest talk is this....the pilots of Lufthansa have come to the organization and said....if you don't declare bankruptcy, we will give up 45-percent of our normal salary, until the summer of 2022 (roughly two years away).

What's this equal?  About 350 million Euro.

The odds of the airline accepting the deal?  Unknown. 

Some might go and suggest that if bankruptcy occurs, a number of planes will be cut/sold off (for a loss), and the airline would rapidly downsize (maybe a quarter less.....maybe even 50-percent less). 

Here's the other part of the story, you just don't know when normal flight operations would start up, or if people would fly at the same rate that they did in 2019.  For the remainder of 2020?  I seriously doubt that things even go to a 40-percent rate by the end of 2020.

It could be the end of 2021 before you see things near to 80-to-90 percent of expected flights.

If Lufthansa goes the bankruptcy route and says no to the pilots?  Well....as they enter into this bankruptcy.....pilots will be let go, and no competition is standing there to pick up their resumes.  They might be sitting there and drawing a marginal furlough unemployment pay situation....for a year or two.