Frankfurt: German national carrier Lufthansa will cut its winter flight plan by “around 10 percent” as the spread of the Omicron variant fuels uncertainty about travel, chief executive Carsten Spohr said Thursday.
“From the middle of January to February, we see a sharp drop off in bookings”, leading the airline group to cancel “33,000 flights or about 10 percent” of its flights this winter, Spohr said in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (FAS).
“Above all we are missing passengers in our home markets of Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Belgium, because these countries have been hit hardest by the pandemic wave,” Spohr said.
Europe’s largest airline group — which includes Eurowings, Austrian, Swiss and Brussels Airlines — was currently running “about 60 percent” of flights compared with the pre-pandemic year 2019, carrying “roughly half” the number of passengers, the CEO said.
The number of cancellations would have been higher were the group not running 18,000 “extra, unnecessary flights just to secure our landing and takeoff rights,” Spohr said.
Germany has placed stricter limits on travellers coming from the United Kingdom and South Africa, among others, where the new variant has caused a surge in cases.
On Thursday, a Lufthansa spokesman told AFP the airline had already cancelled several transatlantic flights around Christmas, after the number of pilots calling in sick was greater than normal for this time of year.
Asked whether the absences were linked to the Omicron variant, the spokesman said he “could not speculate” as he did not have any information about the causes of illness.
In total, the airline has been forced to axe six flights between December 23 and 26, including services to Chicago, Boston and Washington.
The lack of personnel came despite Lufthansa’s “big planned reserves” of crew, the spokesman said.
