Lufthansa builds back the transatlantic backbone

North America has always been a cornerstone of Lufthansa Group's operations. CEO Carsten Spohr referred to it as “the backbone of aviation” during Tuesday’s US Chamber Global Aerospace Summit in Washington. It will not be a coincidence that the airline group announced a further expansion of its transatlantic network on the same day. For the 2024 summer season, Lufthansa announced a new service from Frankfurt to Minneapolis from June 4. Two days later on June 6, the airline will launch services to Raleigh-Durham. Both services will be five times a week. Seattle will be on the network from Munich from May 30 and complement the existing daily service from Frankfurt. Munich-Seattle was announced for the Summer 2020 season but canceled after the outbreak of the pandemic. It’s not just Lufthansa that flies more often to the West next summer. SWISS will add Washington and Toronto to the network from Zurich. Washington will see the first service on March 28 and will become a year-round destination. It was also planned for summer 2020 but delayed during Covid. Toronto is a summer-only service starting on May 10. While Lufthansa says in the press release that the 27 destinations offered to the US are “decidedly more than before Corona,” this seems not entirely true. The 2019 summer schedule saw 19 services to the US from Frankfurt and 10 from Munich. Another three each from Frankfurt and Munich were to destinations in Canada. Revenues That year 2019, the network carriers Lufthansa, SWISS, and Austrian Airlines generated €4.407 billion in revenues on the North American routes, up from €3.731 billion in 2018. Unsurprisingly, this dropped significantly during the Covid-crisis. In 2020, revenues were down to €859 million and recovered to €1.274 billion in 2021. In 2022, they were back to €4.091 billion as capacity had recovered to 85 percent of pre-Covid levels. In the first six months of 2023, total revenues from North American operations already stood at €3.199 billion, of which €2.471 billion is from traffic revenues. The US market contributed by €2.184 billion to traffic revenues or by €2.761 billion in total, the airline said in its HY1 report. Traffic revenues for all regions in the world stood at €13.751 billion or at €16.406 billion if other operating revenues are included. Revenues per available seat kilometer (RASK) were up by 26.8 percent year on year, although to South America they were up by even 44.7 percent. Spohr noted before that Premium revenues are particularly strong, which is reflected in 13 percent higher yields in HY1 for all regions. Bring on the A380s This year, Lufthansa plans to operate at a maximum 85 percent capacity of 2019 levels as it prefers to offer a reliable schedule over significant growth. But that will change in 2024 when capacity should get closer or even surpass pre-pandemic levels. Demand is there, which is reflected by the need to bring back more Airbus A380s than planned. Lufthansa will have four in service by the end of this year, add another two in 2024, and decided a few weeks ago that the seventh and eighth A380 will also be required for the 2024-2025 schedule. Apart from high demand, the unavailability of the Boeing 777-9 until 2025 is another reason. In the summer of 2024, Lufthansa will operate the A380 to four destinations in the US: Boston, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington. Delhi will also be on the A380 schedule again, having been offered before the pandemic too.

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