‘In total, 20,000 short-haul flights will be removed from the schedule through October, equivalent to approximately 40,000 metric tonnes of jet fuel’, the airline announced
European airline Lufthansa joined dozens of airlines in cancelling flights en masse in the coming months, with the German airliner dumping 20,000 planned journeys from its schedule in the coming months.
The move has shaped up to be one of the largest cancellations of planned flights by a global airline, as the travel crisis deepens and jet fuel prices skyrocket.
The German titan of the skies will dump swathes of flights between May and October to save fuel, revealing the mass cancellations in a statement released Tuesday (April 21).
“In total, 20,000 short-haul flights will be removed from the schedule through October, equivalent to approximately 40,000 metric tonnes of jet fuel, the price of which has doubled since the outbreak of the Iran conflict,” a spokesperson for Lufthansa said in its online statement.
The statement continued: “The planned consolidation of the European network is being carried out across Lufthansa Group’s six hubs in Frankfurt, Munich, Zurich, Vienna, Brussels, and Rome. Passengers will therefore continue to have access to the global route network, particularly long-haul connections.
“However, due to the increase in jet fuel prices, this will be achieved significantly more efficiently than before.”
The German airline also cancelled about 120 daily flights as of Monday (April 20).
The plan for travel during the coming summer months would be published in “late April or early May”, the airline’s statement said, and include “optimisations to the short-haul offering for the entire summer season, thereby ensuring schedule stability for the flight plan period”.
The update from Europe’s second busiest airline comes in the wake of comments made by the head of the International Energy Agency last week, who told the Associated Press last week that Europe had “maybe six weeks of jet fuel left”.
As a result, multiple airlines are cancelling flights and introducing new charges as a deepening jet fuel crisis sends shockwaves through the global aviation industry.
Lufthansa is just one of more than 30 airlines around the world who say they have been forced to cancel flights or add charges as a result of Trump’s war in Iran.
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