Lufthansa cost cuts on track
LUFTHANSA is on course to meet its cost-cutting targets, its chief executive said yesterday.
“We are on track in all areas,” Wolfgang Mayrhuber said, as he relaunched the airline’s on-board broadband internet service FlyNet.
To safeguard profitability in the downturn, Lufthansa has said it plans to cut €1bn (£936m) of annual costs by 2011.
It will cut several hundred jobs at its passenger airlines business and could defer some aircraft orders, the airline has warned.
Lufthansa has forecast a full-year operating loss for its cargo business and said it may also post a loss in its passenger airline division if it cannot cut costs fast enough.
Meanwhile, the airline said it would re-introduce on-board internet on its long-haul flights from next year, allowing passengers to send text messages, use their smartphones, and connect to the internet via laptops.
The airline’s first attempt more than six years ago failed to take off properly as its partner at the time, Boeing, withdrew the service.
Lufthansa, which plans to start the service on 50 aircraft next year, has now teamed up with Panasonic.
The news came as Lufthansa and Air France KLM – Europe’s biggest airlines – said they were both seeking to put a limit on how much they will have to pay out for buying greenhouse gas permits.
Both want to secure the amount they will have to pay out to emit carbon dioxide under an EU climate-change scheme from 2012.
Prices for the permits to release one ton of greenhouse gases have jumped massively this year, to as high as €16.04, up from a low of €8.05.