Lufthansa plans to cancel about 34,000 flights from its summer 2023 schedule, German business weekly WirtschaftsWocke reported last week.
The company did not confirm the number of flights it would cancel but did confirm it would be "adjusting its flight schedule for the summer." The reason for the changes is to "avoid the major operational problems of summer 2022 and to allow our guests and also our employees to rely on a stable schedule," according to a Lufthansa statement.
"With the experiences of the past summer, it was already decided last year to constantly review the performance of the overall system together with all partners," the carrier continued. "At present, the personnel bottlenecks in the industry throughout Europe have not yet been completely overcome, and in many cases, training of newly hired colleagues is still underway. For this reason, flights for the summer months have already been canceled—well in advance. This will enable our passengers to adjust their travel plans in line with the alternatives offered by the Lufthansa Group."
As of Feb. 17, the carrier had canceled nearly 14,000 flights between June 1 and Aug. 31 compared with what had been in the schedule as of Jan. 6, according to data from Cirium. Routes that will be completely cut as of those dates include Frankfurt-Trieste and Munich-Genoa.
Routes with the largest number of flight reductions are in Europe and include Frankfurt and each Berlin, Luxembourg, London Heathrow, Dresden, Milan, Hamburg, and Katowice, Poland, as well as Munich and each Leipzig, Dresden, Brussels and Stuttgart. Still, these cuts account for a varying degree of each city pair's frequencies, ranging from a 70 percent service decline for Katowice to a 10 percent decline for Hamburg.
For U.S.-based flights, reductions are planned to be minimal, with most routes and frequencies remaining intact. Four flights between Munich and New York's John F. Kennedy airport have been cut compared with 88 still scheduled.
The number of cuts is expected to increase over the coming days, however, and may expand to the company's other carriers.
Lufthansa had a difficult few days last week. On Feb. 15, it suffered a technology outage in Frankfurt that resulted in several cancellations and delays, and on Feb. 17 it canceled all flights into and out of Frankfurt and Munich because of a 24-hour labor strike.