LUFTHANSA 
"We have a huge inefficiency in the system at the moment," said Spohr at the Business Press Club in Stuttgart on Thursday evening. The Lufthansa Group has ordered 250 new aircraft from Airbus or Boeing for fleet modernization, which are due to arrive between 2024 and 2029. According to Spohr, the plight will continue for so long: "No aircraft will arrive on time."
Lufthansa has been "brutally" affected by this: Of the Lufthansa Group's total of 750 aircraft, 100 are currently on the ground due to maintenance work or because aircraft have already been taken out of service, but the new Airbus or Boeing aircraft are a long time coming. The Boeing long-haul model 777X, for example, has an unprecedented delay of four years when it is handed over to the first customer, Lufthansa, in 2025. At Airbus, the recently slowed production ramp-up of the A320neo short- and medium-haul aircraft is causing further congestion in the supply of new aircraft to airlines.
The supply chain problems that arose during the coronavirus crisis range from the production and maintenance of aircraft to the fitting of seats or galleys and approvals from the authorities. According to Spohr, it is not possible to put an exact figure on how much profit the aircraft shortage has cost Lufthansa, but perhaps half a billion euros a year. On the one hand, fewer tickets are being sold, and fuel costs are higher than with new aircraft - on the other hand, the airline has used the shortage of supply to increase ticket prices when demand is high.
CLIMATE PROTECTION COSTS - WHO PAYS?
Modernizing the fleet of Lufthansa and its subsidiary airlines such as Eurowings, Swiss and Austrian Airlines is one of three levers for reducing CO2 emissions. Climate neutrality by 2050 is also Lufthansa's goal. The longer the new aircraft with 20 to 30 percent less kerosene consumption is delayed, the slower Lufthansa will make progress here. The Lufthansa CEO is skeptical about the second important lever, the use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). It is only available in very small quantities and is up to five times more expensive than fossil kerosene. From next year, the EU will require fuel manufacturers to supply airlines with two percent of their SAF requirements, and the quota will then gradually increase. There are doubts in the industry that there will be enough SAF to meet the quota. "But there has to be, and someone has to pay for it," said Spohr.
Lufthansa has therefore announced that from 2025 it will levy a mandatory environmental cost surcharge to cover the higher costs of climate protection regulations, ranging from one euro per flight in the cheapest class on short-haul routes to 72 euros in First Class on long-haul routes. The surcharges will increase as SAF quotas rise. In addition, customers can continue to voluntarily pay an environmental bonus via the "Green Fares". However, on average only four percent of passengers pay this, compared to more than ten percent of business travelers.
According to the Lufthansa CEO, the European Union is taking the wrong approach by imposing conditions that the customer has to pay for. Other regions of the world were not following suit, leading to a competitive disadvantage for European airlines. The USA took a smarter approach by subsidizing SAF production. Spohr therefore expects a change of course in the planned review of the law in the EU in 2026: "I don't think this will be upheld by the next EU Commission."
(Report by Ilona Wissenbach, edited by Ralf Banser. If you have any queries, please contact the editorial team at frankfurt.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com)
