Lufthansa is reducing its summer timetable due to a shortage of labour. The German airline is still facing a shortage of staff and will cancel 34,000 flights from the end of March to the end of October. Budapest routes are also affected.
Lufthansa adjusts its summer schedule due to shortage of staff
A Lufthansa spokesperson confirmed to Wirtschaftswoche that the German airline has adjusted its 2023 summer schedule. Flights to Frankfurt and Munich are affected. The reason is the shortage of staff, just like last year, airportal.hu reports. Until the end of this year, Lufthansa plans to hire some 20,000 employees. However, this cannot be done until the beginning of the summer peak period.
According to information from aero.de, there are not enough pilots for the A320 family in particular, which operates on European backbone routes. According to the news portal, Lufthansa will be forced to cancel 34,000 flights in the summer months as a result. This represents around 10 percent of the planned schedule.
The German airline aims to prevent panic caused by last-minute cancellations
The airline reduces frequencies on routes with several daily flights and cancels those with few bookings. With this, they are making it easier for affected passengers to rebook to other flights. With planning and informing passengers in advance, Lufthansa aims to prevent chaos caused by last-minute cancellations.
This information is supported by a recent post on the Aeroroutes timetable analysis site. The post shows that Lufthansa has cut its European flights from Frankfurt and Munich by 12.7 and 11 percent respectively for the summer timetable period, compared to 29 January.
Frankfurt-Budapest and Munich-Budapest flights are affected
According to the article of Aeroroutes, the number of flights on the Frankfurt-Budapest route will be reduced from 1,085 to 966 and on the Munich-Budapest route from 992 to 837 between 26 March and 28 October.
According to the article, further flight cancellations can also be expected at subsidiaries Eurowings, Austrian and Swiss.
Meanwhile, Amsterdam Airport will continue to limit the number of departing passengers in April and May, according to information from airportal.hu.