Lufthansa ! LH ! DLH !

Lufthansa CEO Christoph Franz points out that the airline is shifting, albeit in a subtle way, its overall company strategy.

In his view, the airline has mainly been perceived as geared toward the needs of business travelers. “But the future growth will strongly be linked to private travel,” he told journalists at an event in Frankfurt. Franz pointed out that this will be reflected in fare levels, as well as in how the network evolves.

Lufthansa is supportive of Frankfurt Airport’s plans to phase in additional capacity over several years, following the opening of a fourth runway in October. Franz said that growth steps of 5-7% per year make sense.

With the fourth runway, Frankfurt’s capacity will rise from around 80 movements per hour to 120. However, airport operator Fraport has said that it will not make all the slots available in one batch. There are several concerns, among them terminal capacity. The new extension to Terminal 1, Concourse A, which is used by Lufthansa, will not be ready until next summer. Franz said that while competition is likely to increase with more slots becoming available at its main base, he expects Lufthansa’s market share to remain intact.

Given Air Berlin’s plans to cut back around 6% of its capacity systemwide over the winter, Franz does not plan any major moves to fill the gap. “We are not predestined to go into markets that even Air Berlin found to be marginal,” he said, hinting at Lufthansa’s much higher unit costs.

In his view, the group has made some progress in turning around the loss making European network, although much work needs to be done. According to Franz, Lufthansa is looking at various scenarios, some involving incremental change and some more drastic measures, but no decision has been made yet. The airline is also delaying a decision on its future plans for the Berlin base, which is currently the subject of a major internal project. Rival Air Berlin plans to turn its home airport into a connecting hub with the new Berlin Brandenburg International Airport opening next year.

Franz indirectly criticized Air Berlin for its decision to open the Frankfurt-Hamburg route two years ago (the route is now closed again). “Every airline has to decide whether it wants to make money or increase competition,” he said. “And it was not Lufthansa that entered Air Berlin’s hub on a high frequency basis.”

Lufthansa plans to take delivery of its first Boeing 747-8 on 23
April, ahead of entering revenue service with the German airline in May.

The German carrier has ordered 20 passenger-variant 747-8s to replace
its 747-400s, of which the first was delivered in May 1989.

August Wilhelm Henningsen, chief executive of the airline's
maintenance arm, Lufthansa Technik, tells Flightglobal Pro that the
first aircraft would be delivered "around" 23 April.

The 747-8s will join the fleet at a rate of five per year until 2015.

The delivery of the fifth aircraft (RC021), which is to be registered
D-ABYE, was scheduled for August at the point when it visited Frankfurt
for ground equipment tests last December.

Lufthansa will configure the type with 386 passenger seats in a three-class layout, including a new business class.



http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/lufthansa-pegs-23-april-for-747-8-delivery-369867/

Deutsche Lufthansa AG (LHA), Europe’s second-biggest airline, will combine short-haul operations outside its main Frankfurt and Munich hubs with the Germanwings low-cost unit as part of a cost-reduction effort.
The new unit will begin operations in January and fly 18 million passengers annually, Cologne, Germany-based Lufthansa said yesterday. Former Chief Executive Officer Wolfgang Mayrhuber and former Chief Financial Officer Karl-Ludwig Kley have been nominated to join Lufthansa’s supervisory board in 2013, with Mayrhuber becoming chairman, the airline also said.

Lufthansa has a companywide goal of saving 1.5 billion euros ($1.96 billion) through 2014 under a reorganization program dubbed Score. The company is cutting 3,500 jobs in administration and as many as 1,000 catering posts may be eliminated. The program has already helped improve earnings, with second-quarter operating profit increasing 28 percent to 361 million euros and exceeding analyst estimates.
“Combining our domestic German and European point-to-point services has enormous potential to improve efficiency,” CEO Christoph Franz said in a statement. “Our aim is to once again fly these services profitably under the umbrella of a single company.”
The carrier is predicting full-year operating profit in the “mid-three-digit million-euro range,” excluding restructuring costs of 100 million euros to 200 million euros.
Shares Gain
Lufthansa rose as much as 1.7 percent to 10.96 euros and was trading up 1.4 percent at 10:05 a.m. in Frankfurt, the best performance on Germany’s benchmark DAX Index (DAX), which declined 0.6 percent. The stock has gained 19 percent this year, valuing the company at 5.01 billion euros.
The European short-haul strategy is “absolutely crucial,” said Peter Oppitzhauser, a Zurich-based analyst at Credit Agricole with an outperform recommendation on Lufthansa. Unlike discount airlines, “they’re still a network carrier, so they still have to feed the hubs. So what they can do is slash the labor costs, which is what they’re trying to do.”
Mayrhuber, 65, stepped down as CEO at the end of 2010. He is supervisory board chairman at German semiconductor maker Infineon Technologies AG (IFX) and serves on the board of Swiss bank UBS AG. (UBSN) He will succeed Juergen Weber, who is retiring, Lufthansa said. Kley, the 61-year-old CEO of drugmaker Merck KGaA, will replace Klaus Schlede on the Lufthansa board.
Mayrhuber’s Acquisitions
Weber, 71, was also Mayrhuber’s direct predecessor as Lufthansa CEO, while Schlede is another former executive. During Mayrhuber’s term as chief from June 2003 through December 2010, Lufthansa bought BMI, Austrian Airlines and Swiss International Airlines, as well as stakes in JetBlue Airways Corp. (JBLU) and Brussels Airlines NV. Weber, Mayrhuber and Franz, 52, all started at Lufthansa before their 31st birthdays.
Franz’s administration is “concentrating on making units such as Austrian profitable,” rather than acquiring other carriers, spokeswoman Claudia Lange said Sept. 17. Franz concluded the sale of unprofitable BMI to British Airways’ parent International Consolidated Airlines Group in April.
“Their strategies as CEO certainly differ,” said Jochen Rothenbacher, a Frankfurt-based analyst at Equinet Bank AG who has a reduce recommendation on Lufthansa. “But that doesn’t mean Mayrhuber doesn’t support Franz’s current policies. That they had different approaches is true, but the times are also now different.”
Iberia Reorganization
Lufthansa’s operational reorganization echoes moves at competitors. Air France-KLM Group (AF), Europe’s biggest airline, cut its second-quarter operating loss by more than half to 66 million euros, aided by the introduction of a 2 billion-euro savings plan, the Paris-based carrier said July 30. British Airways owner IAG is planning job cuts at Spanish arm Iberia after the Madrid-based brand caused a second-quarter group loss.
IAG CEO Willie Walsh has been working on a turnaround at the Spanish business through the transfer of domestic and short- haul flights to a new unit, Iberia Express, which aims to reduce the break-even point with less-generous labor contracts. The unit was profitable in June, its third full month of operations, IAG said Aug. 3, adding that the wider Iberia restructuring plan may lead to extra costs this year.
Lufthansa is implementing “the same process as IAG with Iberia Express,” Credit Agricole’s Oppitzhauser said. “That’s also related to why the cabin crew is going on strike. They want to outsource 2,000 people to this new unit.”
Labor Dispute
Cabin crews at the German carrier walked out for three days in August and September. A sticking point in wage negotiations was the failure of Lufthansa to guarantee beyond next year that flight attendants wouldn’t be transferred to cheaper contracts at the low-cost division, the Unabhaengige Flugbegleiter Organisation union said at the time.
The strikes, which culminated in half of Lufthansa’s flights being canceled on Sept. 7, ended after the two parties agreed to mediation. Hans-Adalbert Ruerup, a former adviser to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, was appointed as the mediator on Sept. 13.
Lufthansa plans to build a logistics center at Frankfurt airport to replace a warehouse complex that’s more than 30 years old, the airline said yesterday. Construction of the new main building will begin in 2014, following work to prepare the site. The facility will open in 2018.
The project reverses an investment-plan freeze that Lufthansa’s cargo unit imposed following the imposition of a ban at Frankfurt last October on flights between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m., which largely affected air-freight services.
“It is astonishing that Lufthansa complains vociferously to the outside world about the night-flight ban, about how many millions it is costing, how it might leave, but then says it will invest half a billion euros in Frankfurt,” Equinet’s Rothenbacher said. “The whole argument against the night-flight ban now seems not to carry as much weight.”

The pricing strategy is to follow the Germanwings model, but the new airline is to be positioned as a high-end low cost carrier with some more features that are intended to make it attractive to business travelers. Lufthansa plans to reveal more details in early December.

According to Spohr, Germanwings is to be profitable by 2015.

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Un seul fournisseur pour cette fournée de 50 donc
Y a des 777 qui ont été commandés récemment pour swiss

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