Lufthansa cancels 20,000 flights to save fuel amid price hikes
The German carrier said the cuts had saved it around 40,000 metric tonnes of jet fuel
Germany’s national airline Lufthansa has cut 20,000 flights from its schedule through to October in a bid to save on jet fuel.
The cancellations, which came into effect yesterday, will save Lufthansa some 40,000 tonnes of jet fuel, which the airline says has doubled in price since the outbreak of the Iran conflict.
Lufthansa cancelled some 120 daily flights from Monday, effective through to the end of May. Affected passengers have been notified, it said.
Announcing the cancellations and other changes to its flight schedule, Lufthansa said its jet fuel supply has been “secured for the coming weeks”.
“Unprofitable” routes operating out of Munich and Munich have also faced the chop, while expanded routes in Zurich, Vienna and Brussels mean Lufthansa is facing a reduction in overall available seat kilometres of “less than one per cent”.
Meanwhile, a “planned consolidation” of Lufthansa’s European network across its hubs in Frankfurt, Munich, Zurich, Vienna, Brussels and Rome was also being carried out.
“Passengers will therefore continue to have access to the global route network, particularly long-haul connections. However, due to the increase in jet fuel prices, this will be achieved significantly more efficiently than before”, the airline said.
Flights between Frankfurt and the Polish cities of Bydgoszcz and Rzeszów, and Stavanger in Norway, have been “temporarily” removed from Lufthansa’s flight schedule, with 10 other connections being consolidated through other hubs.
“The medium-term route planning for the coming months is being revised, considering the capacity reduction and will be published in late April or early May”, the airline said.
“This will include optimisations to the short-haul offering for the entire summer season, thereby ensuring schedule stability for the flight plan period.”
Lufthansa said it expected a “largely stable fuel supply” for its summer schedule and was pursuing a “range of measures” to achieve this, including procuring jet fuel and price hedging.
The German carrier has a codeshare agreement with Malta’s national carrier, KM Malta Airlines. Codeshare agreements allow one airline to operate a flight, with another, or multiple other airlines, selling tickets for the flight under their branding.
Shortages
The German carrier is not the first airline to face jet fuel concerns following US-Israeli military strikes on Iran, which has since moved to close the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane through which one-fifth of the world’s oil passes.
On Saturday, KM Malta Airlines chairman David Curmi told Times of Malta that a jet fuel shortage ahead of the summer months was a “real concern” for local airlines, even if Malta’s own supply remains intact.
“It’s a real concern,” he said. “Although in Malta we don’t seem to have the problem, if there’s a short supply on the other end, we still can’t operate as usual.”
David O’Brien, chief executive of Ryanair’s Malta subsidiary Malta Air, was robust in his assessment of his company’s prospects, meanwhile, saying most of the airline’s main bases have sufficient fuel stocks to cover the six-week period.
A day earlier, Hungarian low-cost airline Wizz Air encountered jet fuel shortages at three airports in Italy.
The day before that, the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned that Europe had “maybe six weeks or so [of] jet fuel left” in an interview with the Associated Press.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards on Tuesday threatened to end oil production in the Middle East if the Islamic republic faced attacks launched from its Gulf neighbours' territory.
"The southern neighbours should know that if their geography and facilities are used in the service of the enemies to attack the Iranian nation, they should bid farewell to oil production in the Middle East," the commander of Guards' aerospace force, Majid Mousavi, was quoted by Fars news agency as saying.
Doubts continue to swirl over US-Iranian peace talks on Tuesday as it emerged that the American delegation, Vice President JD Vance, was still in Washington and yet to depart for Islamabad, which is acting as mediator for the talks.