Lufthansa Group airlines cancel 33,000 flights in next three months

The airlines of the Lufthansa Group cancelled about 33,000 flights for the next three months due to the rapid spread of the omicron variant of the coronavirus leading to a sharp drop in demand for flights in January and February.

This means that the airlines within the Lufthansa Group have removed 10 percent of their flights from the winter schedule due to the sharp increase in the number of infections and travel restrictions in Europe.

“From mid-January to February, we see a sharp drop in bookings,” Lufthansa Group CEO Carsten Spohr said in an interview with the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine.

The number of cancelled flights should actually be even higher, based on the expected decrease in demand. But Lufthansa is choosing to continue operating 18,000 “additional, unnecessary flights” according to Spohr because the company may otherwise lose important take-off and landing slots.

Normally, airlines must use at least 80 percent of their slots, but for the summer of 2022, the European Commission has approved a usage percentage of 64 percent.

Lufthansa is not the only airline to cut its flight schedule. Earlier this week,  Ryanair announced that it would reduce the number of flights in January by a third.