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After the toughest year in the company's history due to corona, the German boss of the Airbus civil aircraft division, André Walter, is looking tense towards 2021. Nobody knows how the market will develop, said the managing director of Airbus Operations GmbH in Hamburg.

Everything depends on the development of the pandemic.

A new Corona variant had been discovered in Great Britain, which in turn led to closed borders.

“That has a direct impact on air traffic.

And with that in turn on the airlines, our customers. "

In addition to vaccinating people, it is crucial for the future of flying that tourists, for example, travel through rapid tests without quarantine and actually go on vacation at their destination.

If that works, the coming year will certainly be difficult for the industry, "but I hope to be able to look back into more positive times at the beginning of 2022".

For the long haul, however, things will probably only improve again later.

"That is still a long dry spell."

Because of the corona pandemic, Airbus has announced the reduction of 15,000 of the more than 130,000 jobs worldwide.

Of the 5100 jobs affected in Germany, 3200 are in the north.

“We have now started voluntary measures up to and including March.

Until then there will be no redundancies. ”After that, however, he could not rule out layoffs.

That depends on the situation, which is then reassessed with the social partners.

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The volunteer program is currently being well received.

In addition, there is the possibility of extending short-time work, and federal research funding is also important to get through the crisis.

"On the whole, this is moving in the right direction."

"There are no planes flying"

The Airbus manager emphasized: "This is a crisis like we never imagined and like it has never been there." All you have to do is look at the sky.

“There are no planes flying.

Of course, that has a massive impact on our customers and, in the end, of course on our business. ”Because airlines have machines on the ground.

Their willingness to accept new aircraft is low.

“Accordingly, we quickly reduced our production capacities by around 40 percent.” Instead of 60 a month, only 40 aircraft of the A320 family left the Airbus workshops worldwide.

“In the beginning, we produced more aircraft than were taken from us,” said Walter.

But that was deliberately done so "so that we can maintain our supply chain and keep our suppliers alive".

Because they couldn't adjust their capacities so quickly.

Suppliers must not go bankrupt

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"The supplier area in the aviation industry is very sensitive," emphasized Walter.

Every manufacturer needs approval from the aviation authority - and it takes time to get it.

It is therefore important for Airbus that the mostly highly specialized supplier companies do not go bankrupt.

"We have therefore set up internal evaluation and appraisal processes in close contact with our suppliers to see where and when it becomes critical for which supplier." In addition, an initiative has been started with the Federal Association of the German Aerospace Industry to help the companies To enable funding from the federal government and the states.

Training continues

Walter rejected the criticism from IG Metall that the large manufacturers in particular wanted to reduce the number of trainees and thus endanger the future of the industry.

“We have not terminated a training contract this year.” Measured by the number of all employees, Airbus continues to aim for a training rate that is similar to the current five percent.

lno / jlau