“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.
Compared to the previous year – which was already a record year – Spohr expects passenger growth of around 4 percent across the Group.
However, Lufthansa is suffering from the excessively high capacities on the market and the extreme competition from low-cost airlines. “After two record years, we basically expect another year with good results,” says Spohr. But because the supply is growing too strongly, especially in Germany, and air fares are falling as a result, it will not be a “new record year”. In June, Lufthansa had to lower its profit forecast for 2019 because its airline Eurowings will fly into the red in view of tougher competition in Europe.
Ecologically and economically irresponsible
In the NZZ interview, Spohr criticised extremely cheap offers: “Some competitors actually work with prices below 10 euros per flight. That is economically and ecologically and also politically irresponsible.
But here, too, it is primarily the consumers who make use of extremely cheap offers and are thus jointly responsible for the ecological and economic misery. But there is also a lack of political framework conditions. jwm
Sources: NZZ, Dow Jones