Germany’s flagship carrier Lufthansa is set to cut 20,000 flights in the coming months to save on jet fuel and deal with additional costs from airline staff strikes.
Yesterday, the airline announced it would bring forward the effective end of its CityLine short-haul flight offering early. The cancellations concern flights between April and October.
Altogether, Lufthansa will cut 20,000 flights. This is equivalent to around 1 per cent of the airline’s available seat-kilometres, according to the company.
Among the routes affected by the cancellations are the connections between Lufthansa’s main hub in Frankfurt and Bydgoszcz and Rzeszow in Poland as well as Stavanger in Norway.
Lufthansa expects to save 40,000 tonnes of kerosene from the measure.
The company noted that the price of jet fuel had doubled since the start of the Iran war, making many connections uneconomical.
In response to this, Lufthansa plans to consolidate its flight connections using the six main European hubs of the group: Frankfurt; Munich; Zurich; Vienna; Brussels and Rome.
Lufthansa had originally planned to end CityLine in the coming years but these plans were now moved up due to the rocketing kerosene prices. CityLine employees were reportedly put on leave immediately, according to an internal memo published by newspaper Handelsblatt on April 16. Lufthansa had also already announced that 27 CityLine aircraft would be withdrawn from service immediately as part of the restructuring.
Critics are accusing Lufthansa of using the closure as a means of pressuring its unionised German workforce that is prone to hold strikes.
The carrier is routinely hit by large-scale strikes orchestrated by three unions: Ver.di which represents ground workers; UFO which represents cabin staff and VC, the pilots’ union.
In April, UFO and VC teamed up to hold the biggest round of strikes in at least a decade. Pilots and cabin staff in Germany went on strike for five days straight between 13 and 17 April – just in time for Lufthansa’s 100-year anniversary celebrations. AirHelp said the disruption affected roughly 4,000 flights through cancellations and delays.
According to website AirHelp, the strike affected around 4,000 flights through cancellations and delays with delays spreading from Lufthansa’s hubs to other airports such as Paris’ Charles de Gaulle, Amsterdam’s Schiphol and London’s Heathrow airport.
