Company Watch - Lufthansa.

Mar 20, 2006

Lufthansa

Lufthansa CFO Karl-Ludwig Kley is leaving the company for a position at Merck, the German pharmaceutical giant. He informed Supervisory Board Chairman Juergen Weber by telephone on Sunday, Lufthansa said. The board will discuss Kley's successor at its March 22 meeting. Mar 14, 2006

Lufthansa Cargo announced that Executive Board Chairman Jean-Peter Jansen resigned effective March 31 for health reasons. Deutsche Lufthansa Chief Officer-Aviation Services and Human Resources Stefan Lauer was appointed interim chairman. Lauer will step down as chairman of the Lufthansa Cargo Supervisory Board and be replaced temporarily by Wolfgang Mayrhuber. The LCSB appointed MD-Lufthansa CityLine Karl-Heinz Kopfle to the LCEB. He will take charge of Lufthansa Cargo operations beginning April 1. Mar 15, 2006

Lufthansa plans to expand its lower-fare strategy for European flights, Executive VP-Marketing and Sales Thierry Antinori said during the ITB tourism fair in Berlin last week. The carrier recently introduced short-haul return flights starting at [euro]99 ($118) at Hamburg and Dusseldorf with slightly better than expected results. Additionally, it has taken share away from Air Berlin, according to Antinori. "We will definitely roll out this concept. I assume that we will also move into other catchments in the coming months," he said. Passenger numbers are up 40% in Hamburg and 15% in Dusseldorf, he claimed. Antinori said LH is very satisfied with the performance of its Lufthansa Private Jet services, which were introduced a year ago. It is expanding the product and adding bookings with Hawker 800XP and Falcon 2000 jets to encompass the entire EU and most of continental Europe and the Middle East, and is considering adding travel to states in the Russian Federation. "About 1,000 airports are reachable. Depending on the availablity of Netjets, we would like to offer this service also in Shanghai and Guangzhou, as well at other cities in China and Asia, if possible this year," he said. On the network side, Lufthansa will add Bahrain and plans more frequencies to the Middle East. "British Airways stopped flights to Saudi Arabia; we want to expand," Antinori said. More frequencies to Jeddah will follow. A sixth city in India will be added, but no new destinations are planned in China in favor of adding a third frequency to Shanghai. "It is better to consolidate in Shanghai and Guangzhou than to open a new destination in China like Chengdu," he said. Separately, LH said it flew 7.32 billion RPKs in February, a year-over-year increase of 2%. Capacity rose 4% to 10.41 billion ASKs and load factor fell 1.3 points to 70.4%. European traffic increased 5.3% to 1.89 billion RPKs against a 6.1% rise in capacity to 3.2 billion ASKs and load factor dipped 0.5 point to 59%. Mar 14, 2006

Lufthansa and Swiss International further intensify their collaboration and coordinated schedules for South America and Southeast Asia. Lufthansa and Swiss will be further expanding their collaboration with the start of the 2006 summer schedules on March 26. The two quality airlines are to harmonise their schedules to and from South America and Southeast Asia to offer transfer connections between their services in Sao Paulo and Bangkok. Mar 16, 2006

Lufthansa Systems

Lufthansa Systems to offer GDS alternative to Star. Lufthansa Systems will join G2 SwitchWorks and ITA Software as a preferred supplier to provide an Alternative Content Access Platform to Star Alliance airlines, Star and LHS announced yesterday.LHS is teaming with Farelogix on the project and will base its ACAP solution on "core GNE [GDS new entrant] technology" from the Miami-based company, Anselm Eggert, LHS senior VP-Business Division Passenger Airline Solutions, told journalists during a conference call. Mar 17, 2006

Swiss International Air Lines and Lufthansa, continuing the integration of their schedules, will create minihubs in Sao Paulo and Bangkok from the start of the summer season on March 26, permitting passengers to transfer between the airlines for onward travel. For example, Swiss will extend its five weekly Zurich-Sao Paolo services to Santiago while Lufthansa will have a daily flight from Sao Paulo to Buenos Aires. The two westbound flights will arrive in Sao Paulo from Europe at almost the same time, enabling customers to transfer from one to the other for their onward travel within South America. The same arrangements will be made for the Swiss and LH services from Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires respectively, providing passengers with transfer connections to Frankfurt and Zurich, LH said. A similar minihub will be created in Bangkok, from which passengers will have connections to Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Ho Chi Minh City. Mar 17, 2006