Carsten Spohr, CEO of Lufthansa
Skylink's Surjit Babra with Hans deHaan
CWT's Louise Gardner strikes a pose
Rosanna Panetta, Director Leisure Sales, AC
& Naman Budhdeo,CEO, FlightNetwork
Ben Smith, Chief Commercial Officer, AC
View from the swanky Panorama Lounge
The month of May marked 2 anniversary celebrations for Lufthansa – 40 years of flights from Frankfurt to Toronto, and 30 years of service to Vancouver. Carsten Spohr, CEO, Lufthansa German Airlines, hosted anniversary parties with a who’s who list of travel industry ‘air’ types jostling for position among LH and AC execs.
The CEO catered to the Canadian audience by announcing the decision to buy Bombardier C Series jets for the next expansion. The aircraft fits one of the company’s strategic goals which is to retain a young fleet.
Mr. Spohr talked openly about the difficulty for airlines to be profitable – especially the large European legacy carriers. So 1.5 years ago, the company decided on a turnaround plan.
The turnaround is based on 3 objectives: having a young fleet; a strong emphasis on engineering (both the CEO and Juergen Siebenrock, V.P. of the Americas are engineers); and maintaining market share – all without increasing debt. The goal is to decrease debt significantly over the next 3 years.
What will not change is the airline’s dependence on connecting traffic through the FRA hub. Hans DeHaan, Director of Canada, said that the market split continues to be approximately 40/60 for business versus leisure traffic and much of the latter is comprised of VFR traffic to ongoing destinations beyond FRA.
Marking 30 years of FRA-YVR service, Lufthansa was also celebrating the launch of new service to MUN in May. The 1st daily touched down in Vancouver at 17:10 PST on May 16th.
The new Munich-Vancouver route is the only international long-haul route Lufthansa is adding this year worldwide. Juergen Siebenrock, V.P. The Americas, Lufthansa German Airlines noted that, “Given the strong performance of our Vancouver-Frankfurt route and the increasing demand by Western Canadians for a new direct passage to Germany, the new route makes a great addition to our services by adding more than 1,500 additional seats to Germany every week.”
Nils Haupt, Director of Communication The Americas; Juergen Siebenrock,
V.P. The Americas; Carsten Spohr, CEO of Lufthansa; and Hans DeHaan,
Director of Canada with a restaurant staff in an RCMP uniform
Vintage LH Flight Attendants
