Blogging about aviation
Four out of six members of the Executive Board are leaving the Group almost simultaneously, and the Supervisory Board is also eliminating one Executive Board position entirely. Only the CEO Carsten Spohr and the former Chief Human Resources Officer Michael Niggemann will remain.
Lufthansa announced this Group Executive Board mega-restructuring on February 22 in the evening. From July 1, Continue reading “Lufthansa share price slips – risk of strike and Executive Board restructuring”
On Sunday, January 31, 2021, a Lufthansa Airbus A350-900 will take off for the longest nonstop flight in Lufthansa history: 13,700 kilometers from Hamburg to the military base Mount Pleasant in the Falkland Islands. On board there will be scientists and crew members of the research vessel “Polarstern”.
At 9:30 p.m., it’s “Ready for take-off” for 16 crew members and 92 passengers. On board the special flight are Continue reading “Lufthansa takes off with polar explorers to a 13,700-kilometer Nonstop Journey”
Within eight weeks everything has changed. When the crisis ends, the industry will be a different one. The majority of airlines now don’t expect demand to normalize before 2022. Aviation is experiencing the biggest crisis in its history with the outbreak of the Covid 19 pandemic. It is now also clear that this is not a short, difficult phase, but a turning point.
Even though airlines around the world were carrying record numbers of passengers before the crisis, only a minority were doing really well.
The rapid growth of the industry in recent years – driven by cheap capital and low kerosene prices – has only been profitable for very few. Continue reading “The aviation world after Corona – what will it look like?”
Lufthansa wants to fight the corona crisis with massive cuts. “We must counter this extraordinary situation with drastic and in some cases painful measures,” Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr announced. “The longer this crisis lasts, the more likely it is that the future of aviation cannot be guaranteed without state aid.”
The top management of the Executive Board will forego 20 per cent of its basic remuneration this year, said Spohr. Around 700 of the 763 aircraft in the fleet are currently on the ground. According to the Group, only five percent of the originally planned flights are currently taking off. Continue reading “Lufthansa fights the corona crisis with massive cuts”
Robots can fly – but, they cannot do this at the same level of safety as manned aviation. Moreover, it is more than questionable whether automated flight systems/robo-pilots will be more efficient or effective than manned systems in the foreseeable future. This was the conclusion reached by the participants of the 22nd symposium of the Research Network for Pilot Training (FHP), which took place at the end of September under the topic “Are Robots Learning to Fly? – How will the current hype about artificial intelligence (AI) affect work in the cockpit as well as the training and further education of pilots?
A guest contribution by Max Scheck, Lufthansa Captain A320, Master of Aeronautical Science and member of the board of the research network for commercial pilot training, FHP. Continue reading “Robots can fly – but,”
Serving the irresponsibility and the greed of consumers for ever cheaper ticket offers, to quickly jet somewhere at the weekend, to fly domestic routes, has further dramatic not only ecological but also economic consequences for the airlines itselves.
On the morning of 30 July, the Lufthansa share fell by up to seven per cent to its lowest level for two years. The discount battle with airline tickets Continue reading “Ruinous price war in the sky – Airlines serve greed and irresponsibility of consumers”
“We do not currently see any restraint – on the contrary,” Lufthansa Group CEO Carsten Spohr told the Neue Züricher Zeitung (NZZ) on 14 July in an interview on the question of a possible Greta effect. The Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg is the initiator of the worldwide student protests, which also blame the growing number of flights for climate change. Continue reading “Lufthansa does not feel a “Greta effect””
Air traffic has come under fire in the discussion about climate protection, also through “Fridays for Future”. Among other things, French President Emmanuel Macron called for kerosene to be taxed throughout Europe. In an interview with Zeit online, the CEO of the Federal Association of the German Air Transport Industry (BDL) said that air traffic is already bearing its full costs for society. This is not true, writes energy economist Sebastian Timmerberg in a guest article for Zeit online and calls for a kerosene tax. Continue reading ““Flight shame” – expression of a bad conscience”
Despite the share crash and profit warning: the appreciation of passengers continues unabated. The Lufthansa Group has been voted “Best Airline in Europe” and “Best Western European Airline” for the third time in a row and ranks 9th among the top 10 airlines in the world. The prize was awarded on 18 June by the market research institute Skytrax at the Paris Air Show. Continue reading “Lufthansa Group awarded four airline Oscars”
With immediate effect all Lufthansa long-haul flights are equipped with the mobile “ECG system CardioSecur”. The system enables flight attendants to record an ECG in medical emergencies without cardiological expertise, which is sent directly to a medical hotline on the ground for diagnosis. Continue reading “ECG and telemedicine on Lufthansa long-haul flights”