Lufthansa will temporarily suspend its flights from Munich to Zagreb and Sarajevo, marking its departure from both markets. The German carrier’s operations to the capitals of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina will be discontinued on December 1 and are not planned to resume before the 2021 summer season. Lufthansa previously suspended flights between Frankfurt and Zagreb for the winter. Croatia Airlines intends on restoring its operations to the Bavarian capital from December 16, while there will be no nonstop alternative for the Munich - Sarajevo service, which was restored just last week. Lufthansa initially planned to run 38 flights to Zagreb and sixteen to Sarajevo during December.
Amid the continued impact on demand from travel restrictions, the Lufthansa Group says its airlines will offer a maximum of 25% of last year’s capacity until the end of next month. “This consistent capacity reduction will ensure that flight operations continue to make a positive contribution to earnings”, the company said. Among Lufthansa Group carriers, Austrian Airlines has temporarily suspended its flights to Zagreb, while Eurowings has cancelled its operations to Sarajevo, but continues to maintain flights to the Croatian capital. Elsewhere, Lufthansa remains present in the region with services from Frankfurt to both Belgrade and Ljubljana, while Austrian continues to serve Belgrade, Podgorica, Pristina, Sarajevo and Skopje.
Lufthansa Group says that over the winter flight schedule, it will operate 125 fewer aircraft than originally planned. Its CEO, Carsten Spohr, said: “We are now at the beginning of a winter that will be hard and challenging for our industry. We are determined to use the inevitable restructuring to further expand our relative competitive advantage. We aspire to remain the leading European airline group following the end of the crisis”. He added, “We want to return to a positive operating cash flow in the course of the coming year. In order to achieve this, we are advancing restructuring programmes throughout the group with the aim to make the Lufthansa Group sustainably more efficient in all areas”.
Someone posted on here the other day that LF from ZAG to Germany was around 35%. I guess now it makes sense why LH is moving these flights to OU. They get the passengers while OU gets the losses.
ReplyDeleteKucko did warn us that OU is losing money on all of its winter flights.
Was flying yesterday from Frankfurt to Ljubljana. Plane was nearly sold out. 8 seats free in business class, max 5 seats free in economy.
DeleteDid you connect from somewhere or...? What plane was it?
Delete@anonymous 09:02 Kucko also said that the aircraft which does not fly saves money...
Delete@Anonymous10:58: I think it was Embraer ERJ-190. Yes i was flying from Zurich. I was shocked how empty Zurich was (terminal 1) and also Frankfurt was empty for Frankfurt but it was definitively the busiest among all airports i have seen in the past 4 months (Zagreb, Vienna, Zurich, Ljubljana, Malta, Koln, Paris - but it was late night flight) ...
DeleteHow was the load on your flight from Zurich?
DeleteI would say around 40-50% max (the middle seats were empty, business class had max 10 people). We were flying on Airbus 320NEO.
DeleteThat's quite bad for ZRH flight.
DeleteI flew DUS-SPU on EW this morning and the flight was packed! It's only 1 flight/week so I guess it makes sense.
Deletewow things are getting bad
ReplyDeleteWhat is LH's network to the ex-YU like right now? Where will they fly after suspending SJJ and ZAG?
ReplyDeleteIt says it in the article. Last sentence second paragraph.
DeleteMUC is massively cut by LH, I think they just suspended three long-haul destinations from there and they shifted around 8 A350s to FRA.
DeleteWhy is it that MUC sustained so many cuts, while FRA did better? Any particular reason?
DeleteBigger catchment area around FRA and a much larger operations.
DeleteI suppose they don't need 2 hubs when they only fly with 25% capacity, and they just decided to use FRA. FRA was always their major hub, MUC less so.
DeleteFRA has better (and faster) train connections to all parts of Germany. MUC has a problem that there is no direkt trains to the airport from the german (but also austrian) cities and the travel from the MUC main station to the airport lasts for at least 40 minutes by S-Bahn (lines 1 and 8) usually in full trains and probably without a seat...
Deleterubbish as LH owns 50% of MUC. as somebody above said they dont need two hubs when they're flying with 25% of their overall capacity so they concentrate on the bigger one for the time being
DeleteShame about SJJ especially considering its overall connectivity. Now The only option to fly anywhere west is with Austrian.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if they will return in summer to Sarajevo.
DeleteFingers crossed.
DeleteReally bad news for both airports.
ReplyDeleteWho would have thought at the begining of the year that it would be possible for Zagreb to lose Lufthansa.
ReplyDeleteCrazy
DeleteLH didnt lose LH. I dont know what are you talking about.
DeleteI said ZAG. And it did. For the winter.
DeleteLH didnt lost ZAG. It just suspended flights.
Delete*ZAG
DeleteThey just suspended flights. There is huge difference between losing airline and airline suspending flights. Example. ZAG lost Aegean, but SU just suspended them.
DeleteZAG has no single flight with LH during the winter although Croatian citizens can enter Germany.
DeleteWho would have thought it would ever happen?
Very bad news for ZAG.
When you have OU, posibilties for that exist even in good times.
DeleteBut still never happened
DeleteSo no flights MUC until OU starts in mid December?
ReplyDeleteYes
DeleteWhat will be the frequency?
DeleteI think double daily on the Q400
DeleteIf the circumstances allow...
DeleteSo much for the LH Group
ReplyDeleteWhat were they supposed to do? Keep flying empty?
DeleteNot good.
ReplyDeleteI hope these do actually resume next year.
ReplyDeleteLike everything at this time, it's uncertain. We will see.
DeleteSo which airlines are flying now to ZAG and which to SJJ?
ReplyDeleteZagreb - Air France, Air Serbia, Croatia Airlines, Eurowings, KLM, LOT, Qatar Airways, Trade Air, Turkish Airlines, Windrose.
DeleteSarajevo - Air Serbia, Austrian, Croatia Airlines, Flydubai, Pegasus, Turkish.
DeleteI left out LH since they are suspending the flights.
DeleteQR is once weekly.
DeleteIn my opinion that's what LH should have done. Kept a symbolic 1 weekly flights. They would probably be able to fill it.
DeleteWhy should they keep "symbolic flights"?
DeleteMakes sense considering the lockdowns in Germany.
ReplyDelete+1
DeleteWhy don't they then stop flying to BEG?
DeleteLH increased FRA-BEG from 3 to 9 weekly from mid October
Now is not mid october.
DeleteHe used past tense, increased indicating a past period that passed now so I don't see what's wrong with his commnet. Also LH plans 9 weekly in December as well so there are no changes for now.
DeleteI said it was in October because there were no plans for lockdown in Germany. And ZAG was increased to daily.
DeleteBut situation in BEG did not change in November and December despite lockdown and in ZAG it did change.
DeleteIt was the main point here.
I don't know if you guys have noticed but SJJ-MUC is currently deliriously expensive. They are selling next week for over 300 euros.
ReplyDeleteThey are probably full.
DeleteI think this route was always expensive
DeleteThese suspensions every other day are getting ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteThis sucks. :/
ReplyDeleteI don't like this.
ReplyDeleteLH was not in Zagreb so ZAG can brag about having a prestige airline, it was there because it was making money. Now LH doesn't make money on that route and they don't care if OU will be able to make money on the same route, or if ZAG airport will lose yet another prestige airline. LH is only looking after own interests.
ReplyDeleteAs every profit oriented business should be doing.
Delete