Lufthansa Group is pulling 20,000 short-haul flights from its summer schedule through October, the airline announced on April 21 in a press release seen by ET, as it moves to shed unprofitable routes after jet fuel prices doubled since the outbreak of the Iran conflict.
The cuts reduce the group’s overall summer capacity by less than 1% of available seat kilometres but save an estimated 40,000 metric tons of fuel. The first 120 daily cancellations took effect on April 21 and run through the end of May, with affected passengers already notified.
For travellers, the immediate impact is the temporary loss of at least three destinations from the network. Lufthansa has dropped routes from Frankfurt to Bydgoszcz and Rzeszów in Poland and to Stavanger in Norway.
Flights to Poland and Eastern Europe taking a hit
A further 10 connections, including Cork, Gdańsk, Ljubljana, Rijeka, Sibiu, Stuttgart, Trondheim, Tivat, Wrocław and Heringsdorf, are being rerouted through other group hubs rather than cancelled outright, meaning passengers on those routes face longer connection times or a change of carrier within the group.
The consolidation runs across all six Lufthansa Group hubs in Frankfurt, Munich, Zurich, Vienna, Brussels and Rome, and covers the group’s hub airlines: Lufthansa Airlines, SWISS, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines and ITA Airways.
While short-haul services bear the brunt, the group said long-haul connections would be maintained.
A revised medium-term route plan covering the full summer season is expected in late April or early May. The group said the updated schedule would prioritise stability for the remainder of the flight plan period.
Lufthansa said its jet fuel supply for the coming weeks was secured through a combination of physical procurement and price hedging, but the scale of the cuts signals that the group expects elevated fuel costs to persist well into the autumn.
For travel buyers and tour operators routing clients through Lufthansa Group hubs, the message is to check connections on secondary European routes carefully and build in flexibility. Passengers booked on affected flights are being offered rebooking or refunds.
Original press release.