German flagship airline Lufthansa is cutting costs after labour strikes in the first quarter, with measures including hiring fewer staff in administration.
At the presentation of the final quarterly figures for this year in Frankfurt, chief executive Carsten Spohr said that savings had to be made in all areas that did not directly affect customers.
In principle, the company had resolved to manage with 20% fewer managers and employees in the administrative areas compared to 2019. The high strike costs would also have to be recouped through increased productivity, Spohr said.
Tickets for the group companies such as Swiss, Austrian, Eurowings and Lufthansa will remain scarce and expensive this summer. However, he does not foresee any further price increases, but rather a levelling off of prices, Spohr said. "It will be another very strong summer of travel."
Group-wide, Spohr expects flight capacity for 2024 to be only 92% of the level seen before the Covid-19 crisis. However, bookings for the summer half-year are 16% higher than a year ago, which promises "highly profitable growth."
It will certainly be another "very, very good year" for the Lufthansa group, the chief executive said.
Spohr has ruled out an operating profit at the previous year's level for 2024. In mid-April, Lufthansa's top management was already forced to reduce its profit target by half a billion euros due to the negative impact of the ongoing strikes and poorer airfreight business.
The manager now only expects an adjusted earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) of around €2.2 billion ($2.35 billion), half a billion less than originally targeted.
In the seasonally weak first quarter, the operating loss tripled to €849 million compared to the same quarter of the previous year.
The company put the costs of the various strikes at around €450 million. Of this, €350 million were already incurred in the first quarter, when the company's own ground staff and cabin crews, as well as security staff at many airports, went on strike.
On Tuesday, Spohr reported on a fresh collective labour agreement with the pilots of the subsidiary Eurowings until the end of 2026, which had been reached without any strikes. Contracts have now been concluded for the vast majority of employees.
