Coronavirus-Lufthansa plans to cancel 33,000 flights this winter because of Omicron-press


BERLIN, December 23 (Reuters) – Lufthansa plans to cancel 33,000 flights from its winter schedule due to the spread of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19, which is leading to new travel restrictions, said the chairman of the board of the German air transport group, Carsten Spohr, at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper.

“From mid-January and until February, we expect a sharp drop in bookings,” he told the weekly, specifying that the 33,000 canceled flights corresponded to around 10% of the flight schedule for Winter.

This decline in bookings is particularly evident in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Belgium, all countries particularly affected by the epidemic recovery, observed Carsten Spohr.

He said the number of flights canceled in January due to lower demand would have been even higher if the group had not had to charter flights to ensure they retain their take-off and landing slots. .

“We must operate 18,000 additional superfluous flights over the winter period simply to secure our take-off and landing slots”, he stressed, lamenting that the European Union does not do more to reduce the scale of these ” phantom flights “, the reverse of its objectives in the fight against global warming.

European rules, which force airlines to use 80% of their slots to keep them the following year, have been relaxed since the start of the pandemic.

The European Commission had set the rate of slot use at 50% for the winter of 2021-2022 and in mid-December adopted a rate of 64% for the next schedule of flights during the summer period (from March 28 to October 29, 2022 ).

(Report Miranda Murray, French version Myriam Rivet, said by Bertrand Boucey)



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