Lufthansa Group was one of a number of airlines to make major announcements overnight, as the industry continues to mitigate the impact of the coronavirus crisis.
The German flagship said it will be cutting 23,000 flights from its schedule on the same day the World Health Organisation labelled the outbreak a pandemic.
The update from Lufthansa came a week after it said it would be cancelling 50 per cent of its schedule and grounding its fleet of Airbus A380s.
This affects both short, medium and long haul services. The period affected by the cancellations is 29 March to 24 April.
However, the airline additionally warned that “further cancellations are expected in the coming weeks”.
The group also said, “The capacity adjustments mainly affect Europe, Asia and the Middle East. In the cancellations, care will be taken to ensure that all destinations on all continents can be reached with a Lufthansa Group airline via the hubs of Frankfurt, Munich, Zurich, Vienna and Brussels.”
In other major announcements overnight:
- British Airways has seemingly suspended all business class Airbus A318 flights between London and New York with tickets no longer available after 25 March.
- Korean Air is grounding all 10 of its A380s plus approximately 90 other aircraft as traffic rapidly decreases from countries imposing entry restrictions on South Korea, which had the second-largest coronavirus outbreak, but is now third-largest as cases in Iran grow faster. It is the second Asian carrier to ground its super jumbo fleet as their use cannot be justified with low traveller numbers.
- Latvian airline airBaltic has revealed plans to cut staff by 250 as they continue capacity cuts. The airline has cancelled some 580 flights between 31 March and 31 May.
- Air Canada has reduced its Boeing 737 MAX order. Now, the Canadian carrier will take 11 fewer of the type than initially planned. While also related to the grounding of the aircraft, not taking 11 of the larger MAX 9 aircraft means that Air Canada can cut some unnecessary capacity amid the current slump in travel demand.
- Top executives at Alaska Airlines and Southwest said Tuesday the carriers are weighing cuts to their flight schedules in the next few months because of the precipitous drop in air traffic demand from concern about the novel coronavirus.
