The six members of Lufthansa’s management board can claim millions of euros in bonuses for 2021 and 2022, years when the group benefited from massive state aid due to Covid-19, the daily Handelsblatt reported on Tuesday. The supervisory board, which controls the management of the first European air transport group, approved these payments, for an undisclosed amount, during a meeting in early December, according to the German economic daily, which quotes sources close to the company. “The compensation of the management board, which is currently being discussed, will not be paid until 2025 at the earliest, depending on various factors“, told AFP a spokesman for Lufthansa, without further details.
Some employee representatives on the board, however, voted against this decision, seeing it as a violation of the conditions of the rescue plan from which the group benefited in 2020, says the daily. The Covid-19 pandemic caused an unprecedented crisis for aviation and Lufthansa only owed its survival to a plan of 9 billion euros of public aid and guaranteed loans, subject to an entry into the capital of the State, which in 2020 became its largest shareholder. This plan stipulated that the members of the group’s management could not receive bonuses during the period of use of public aid, recalls the Handelsblatt.
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The government sold all of its shares in the airline last September and Lufthansa was able to repay all state aid at the end of 2021. The supervisory board “respects applicable law in all decisions concerning executive compensation“Assured the spokesperson to AFP.
In 2021, Group CEO Carsten Spohr received a fixed salary of 1.63 million euros and no bonuses, compared to a total of 4.97 million euros in 2019 (including 3.3 million bonuses), l year preceding the Covid-19, i.e. a two-thirds drop in his remuneration. After 30,000 jobs cut between 2020 and 2021 due to the health crisis, Lufthansa launched a campaign in November to recruit 20,000 employees in Europe, against a backdrop of a strong recovery in air traffic and labor shortages in the sector.
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