The CEO of Luxair was a guest at RTL Radio on Wednesday morning.
Unsurprisingly, the airline lost close to €150 million in revenue in 2020. Feith acknowledged the difficulty of the situation and expressed his sympathies for other sectors, such as hospitality, which suffer similarly under the pandemic.
Luxair lost around 70% of their usual customer numbers, but were helped through the crisis by investors and government measures, including partial unemployment. Nevertheless, Feith expressed his confidence that their safety concepts will make it possible to return to positive results again in 2021. New destinations, including Bucharest and Stockholm, are expected to replace the ones formerly popular but no longer profitable in light of current travel restrictions.
Feith explained how the grounded planes, which used to fly at high frequencies, have now been used to create a network of 85 destinations in an effort to compensate losses: "Not even Brussels airport has more destinations available."
The CEO also acknowledged that 600 Luxair employees will be concerned by pandemic repercussions, such as pre-retirement, or internal reappointments. Although the Cargo Centre has had a bigger work load since the beginning of the pandemic, it also recorded a loss of €10 million due to elevated staff costs. At the moment, the cargo industry is once again in decline, Feith noted.
When asked about the national controversy surrounding Luxair's replacement of Luxembourgish sparkling wine with French imports on board, Feith explained that the airline made the switch for financial reasons, "no exceptions" being made. However, if a collaboration opportunity with Luxembourgish winemakers were to present itself, Luxair will certainly consider it, Feith concluded.
