Shortages in personnel
Lufthansa has to further reduce its flight schedule
December 18, 2023, 8:37 p.m
Lufthansa must reduce its ambitious goals for 2024 early on. The crane airline is lacking machines and personnel in many areas. At a German location where the shortage of workers is particularly noticeable.
The Lufthansa Group will also have to reduce its original flight schedule next year. In an interview with the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, CEO Carsten Spohr cited bottlenecks in personnel and available aircraft as the reason. In addition to the aircraft manufacturers’ delivery difficulties, there are now unplanned engine overhauls for a certain engine on the Airbus A320. Over the year, 20 of the 450 aircraft of this type were missing.
The company recently announced that it would fly 95 percent of the offer from the pre-Corona year 2019 again in 2024. According to Spohr, nothing will come of this: “We will adjust the flight schedule for 2024 slightly and slightly reduce the originally planned growth. The same applies to us next year: quality takes precedence over excessive growth – despite the high global demand.”
Lufthansa had to revise its flight schedules in 2022 and 2023 when it restarted after Corona because its own team and service providers could not meet the requirements. Tens of thousands of flights were canceled early, and air traffic in Germany did not grow as quickly as in other European countries. After the Frankfurt hub, Munich has also recently lost in punctuality, Spohr noted in the interview. The shortage of workers, which will continue to keep Germany very busy, is particularly noticeable at the Munich location.
Spohr also promised improvement in terms of service quality. “We do everything we can to avoid irregularities and further improve punctuality. If this is not possible, for example in the event of unavoidable disruptions to our flight operations, we want and must improve our customer communication and digital services.” A lot is being invested there, says Spohr. “On peak days, our app already handles 6,000 rebookings. At the same time, we are expanding our call center capacities. Whether with or without irregularities: We always want to be better by the amount that we are more expensive due to our location.”