Lufthansa is performing well in a difficult environment. The airline continues to stress on its quality of product and continue to be innovative to capture and retain its clients.
BERLIN- German carrier Lufthansa remains one of Europe’s largest carriers with close to 75 million passengers a year. Despite economic difficulties in many European economies, clever marketing strategy and constant quality of product helped the airline to withstand a more difficult environment, according to Jens Bischof, Lufthansa German Airlines Board Member in charge of Sales and Revenue Management during a press conference at ITB.
Lufthansa even managed to grow its share in extremely competitive markets such as the Middle-East or transatlantic routes. In Asia, a new joint venture with All Nippon Airways in Japan helped grow traffic between Japan and Europe. “We offer nine daily flights between Germany and Japan thanks to a code share agreement with our Japanese partner. We will now expand this cooperation with the integration of our subsidiaries Swiss and Austrian Airlines into our JV from April 1st. Which means more flights and then more flexibility to our passengers”, added Mr. Bishof.
Asked if such a joint venture could be reproduced with Mainland China –where Lufthansa has assured a strong presence for many decades-, Mr. Bishof remains vaguer. “China is of course a country with enormous potential and rapid growth of its passengers’ traffic. We developed many new routes to secondary destinations in China. And we are looking at ways to see if such a joint venture with China could be reproduced. We do explore possibilities with our Star Alliance partner Air China for closer cooperation which could take place in technical maintenance, cargo and passengers,” Jens Bishof added.
Among commercial products announced during the ITB is a new air fare in First Class. “We are the only one in the Western World to have obtained a five-star rating for its First Class with Skytrax and we offer the biggest number of seats daily in first class at 1,000 seats. We would like to encourage more passengers to enjoy our celebrated first class”, said Jens Bischof.
The introduced new fare can be down by up to 50% compared to the full First Class fare. The discounted fare is however assorted with restrictions such as booking period, length of stay or restrictions on booking changes. For example, minimum stay requirement for Asian destinations is fixed at ten days. The First Saver Plus fare is not re-bookable, but bookings can be cancelled on payment of a 400-euro fee.
Some 30 routes will be on sale, including Bangkok or Japan. “With our second First Class fare, we target leisure travellers keen to try our first class world”, stressed the Lufthansa executive. For example, Bangkok will be sold at around Euro 4,500 euros compared to over Euro 10,000…
In another development, Jens Bishof announced that Lufthansa will finally introduce in 2014 a Premium Economy Class, after having expressed its opposition to such a product for many years. According to Mr. Bishof, some 10% of the capacity in the back of the cabin will be dedicated to the new full fare economy service on long haul routes.
And finally in Europe, all point to point routes will now be served by Lufthansa subsidiary Germanwings. Previously a low cost carrier, Germanwings is now moving into an hybrid product of “a la carte” simplified service. All the flights from and to Berlin, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Hamburg or Stuttgart will be transferred to Germanwings while Lufthansa will serve only with its own aircraft short haul destinations out of its two hubs in Frankfurt and Munich.
Luc Citrinot a French national is a freelance journalist and consultant in tourism and air transport with over 20 years experience. Based in Paris and Bangkok, he works for various travel and air transport trade publications in Europe and Asia.
