Lufthansa has signed agreements with trade unions to introduce reduced working hours for cabin crew and ground staff in Frankfurt and Munich due to the Covid-19 situation.

The agreement also applies to the management team, but a deal has not been signed with the pilots union Vereinigung Cockpit.

According to Lufthansa, the extent of reduced working hours will be determined depending on the loss of work and can be a cut of up to 100 per cent. For some employees, this change began retrospectively earlier this month.

The agreement applies to at least 27,000 of Deutsche Lufthansa AG¡¯s 35,000 employees. It will also come into effect for the group¡¯s airlines in Austria, Switzerland and Belgium.

Michael Niggemann, chief officer corporate human resources and legal affairs, said: ¡°With short-time working, we want to secure jobs of our employees in these difficult and unusual times. Our goal remains trying to avoid redundancies. The agreement of short-time work is an essential prerequisite for this. We will have to constantly review the economic parameters.¡±

Lufthansa will increase its short-time working allowance of up to 90 per cent of the net salary lost through reduced hours, though it warned that how long it can pay these top-up amounts depends on the duration of the coronavirus crisis.

Members of the airline¡¯s Supervisory Board have waived 25 per cent of their pay, while the Executive Board has agreed a 20 per cent cut. Managers not affected by reduced hours have waived between 10 and 15 per cent of their monthly salaries. These waivers will apply from 1 April for at least six months.

In addition, the company has proposed discontinuing its dividends for the 2019 financial year.