Sitting on a train and reading that Lufthansa is expecting the highest profit ever in their history. Nothing bad in making a lot of profit or making history – not at all.
What strikes me is the timing.
Lufthansa went thru a severe crisis during the pandemic and received financial support from the government. No problem – they paid it back including good interest rates for the government, hence the tax payers. Then the war came and the inflation kicked in. People are doing not good and inflation — especially energy costs – went to very high levels. Therefore you heard a lot from Lufthansa, that they are suffering from the higher costs and they have to raise their prices. Still okish so far. To top this up, there is a crisis to find proper qualified workers for Lufthansa – in all areas. Pilots, Stewards, ground personal and so on. This shortage of people led to the effect that Lufthansa is flying just about 85% percent of the flights they did before the pandemic.
Now lets add this all up. Lufthansa suffers from a shortage of people, from super high energy costs, from inflation in other areas, customers that have less and less money to spend and therefore have to reduce their offering down to 85%. You got this all? You understand the severe challenges Lufthansa is facing?
How come, that they will have the highest profit in 2023 in their company history? There must be something wrong in this math? If it is so hard to operate the company and there are so many issues – how can you achieve these record high profits? For sure not by having the cost down. Obviously by having the revenues at a level they had never before in company history – which means prices are as high as they never had been before (even they are offering their captains at least 25% (!!!!) more salary – insane).
And we are talking about a business that is the worst for the climate and without any foreseeable solution to make it environmental friendlier.
A totally wrong development and super hard to digest. The public is suffering thru the challenges of these days with less money in their pockets and companies are developing their profit to all time highs. Think about all people would get thru the inflation and climate change and pandemic – and all would earn record high salaries at the same time – that would be fun.
I know it is not easy and always possible – but use what you have to not support this business behavior. And taking the train from Zurich to Milano is requiring 3KG of CO2 compared to 146KG of CO2 to take a flight…
