Germany’s national carrier Lufthansa will cut its winter flight plan by “about 10%” as the expansion of the Omicron option increases uncertainty about travel, CEO Carsten Spore said on Thursday.
“From mid-January to February, we are seeing a sharp drop in bookings, as a result of which a group of airlines canceled” 33,000 flights, or about 10% “of their flights this winter,” Spur said in an interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (FAS).
“First of all, we are short of passengers in our domestic markets in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Belgium, because these countries have been hit hardest by the pandemic wave,” Spur said.
According to the CEO, the largest European group of airlines, which includes Eurowings, Austrian, Swiss and Brussels Airlines, currently operates “about 60%” of flights compared to pre-pandemic 2019, carrying “about half” of passengers.
The number of cancellations would be greater if the group did not operate 18,000 “additional, unnecessary flights just to secure our landing and take-off rights,” Spur said.
The airline industry has suffered since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, when many flights were suspended in 2020 as the countries closed their borders.
Read also: Germany is immersed in a strict regime, banning New Year’s tourism
The European Association of Airports ACI Europe estimated on Thursday that the number of passengers traveling through its members has fallen by 20% since November 24, when the World Health Organization first announced the Omicron option.
Germany has imposed stricter restrictions on travelers coming, in particular, from the UK and South Africa, where the new option has caused an increase in the number of cases.
A sudden headwind for the industry has also forced Irish low-cost carrier Ryanair to cut its January schedule by 33% this week.
Across the Atlantic, American Airlines said it operated an average of more than 5,000 flights a day during the Christmas and New Year, which is about 86 percent of its 2019 flight schedule.
According to the company, domestic demand is “very high”.
Internationally, travel restrictions or pandemic testing requirements have a deterrent effect on demand, he added, and we have seen this in some places.
Sick pilots
A Lufthansa spokesman told AFP on Thursday that the airline had already canceled several transatlantic flights by Christmas after the number of sick pilots was higher than usual for this time of year.
Asked whether these cases were related to the Omicron option, the spokesman said he “could not make assumptions” because he had no information about the causes of the disease.
From December 23 to 26, the airline was forced to cut six flights, including to Chicago, Boston and Washington.
According to a representative of the airline, the shortage of staff arose despite the “large planned reserves” of the crew of Lufthansa.
The Swedish national carrier SAS on Wednesday also canceled nine flights due to the coronavirus after canceling about 30 flights around the world the day before.
Lufthansa posted its first operating profit since the start of the pandemic in the third quarter of this year after a difficult 18 months.
The carrier registered an operating loss of 5.5 billion euros in 2020 and turned to the state for support.
In November, Lufthansa announced that it had completed the payment of nine billion euros in financial assistance received from the government earlier than planned.
We will remind, earlier DIP reported that the majority of the European countries canceled celebrations of New Year’s holidays, read details in a material – “No celebrations and fireworks: it became known that waits for tourists in the different countries of Europe for New Year“.