Lufthansa Group: Eurowings steals a major loss



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Frankfurt –

Low-cost European airlines are currently shaken by violent turbulence. This is also noticeable at Lufthansa. Their operating income decreased by 3% to 982 million euros in the second quarter. The low-cost division Eurowings has to fight hard

On the one hand, this has to do with the integration of large parts of the failed rival of Air Berlin. On the other hand, Lufthansa talks about "external factors" that would have affected the company. This refers to flight cancellations and delays badociated with air traffic controller strikes and air traffic control personnel shortages. All this made Eurowings lose a little less than 200 million euros in the first half of the year. It's almost three times less than during the same period last year. We are putting a lot of money on Eurowings to strengthen the position in the market, "said CFO Ulrik Svensson. The main competitors are the Irish Ryanair and the British Easyjet. Eurowings plans to complete the merger with the Air Berlin coins in the third quarter so that it can inject profits next year.

Review: Lufthansa has almost completely resumed Air Berlin. The European Commission banned it. A much smaller package with only 77 aircraft and a large part of the crews was allowed to be taken care of. The so-called flood of recent months was then more complicated and prolonged than expected. Nevertheless, in order to increase the supply as planned, the machines and crews had to be hired.

Eurowings and sister companies were also at the heart of the chaos in European air traffic. The entire group experienced more cancellations and delays in the first six months than the year before. One factor was that there was a shortage of airport security and air traffic control personnel to cope with the surge in air traffic. However, industry experts also point out that airlines often had a schedule that was too short for schedules, complicating processes at airports. In any case, Eurowings said: "Extraordinary expenses for compensation payments as a result of delays and cancellations," says the annual report. The position increased by 45 million euros in the first half. Higher fuel costs have been added on top of that. They climbed to Eurowings by nearly a third to 433 million euros. Overall the Lufthansa Group is scheduled for 2018 with a fuel bill of six billion euros, 850 million more than in 2017. Nevertheless, the group wants to inject a profit from the same amount. total operating, which is expected to approach the record of the previous year (just under three billion euros), The division of cheap flights must be presented to the two main competitors of the British Isles in the three to next four years. The leaders want to stabilize Eurowings as number three in terms of size and number of pbadengers and catch up with Ryanair and Easyjet in terms of profitability. That the way is still far enough, can be derived from various indicators. The focus should be on improving efficiency. But in the first half of the year, costs per seat and kilometers traveled increased even without taking into account fuel costs. The use of the aircraft – which is the most important factor for high returns – has indeed been able to increase during the first half of the year. Eight seats out of ten are occupied on average when the plane takes off. But with Ryanair, the use is greater than 95%.

However, it may very well be that Eurowings may soon be absopenstig to Irish pbadengers. Ryanair has been in conflict with pilots and flight attendants, causing flight cancellations and frustrated customers. Next Wednesday, Ryanair's German pilots want to report on their strike plans.

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