Berlin — German airline Lufthansa does not expect operations to return to normal until next year and said reducing the number of flights in the only solution at the moment.
"Unfortunately, we will hardly be able to realistically achieve a short-term improvement now in the summer," Lufthansa board member Detlef Kayser told Die Welt newspaper. This is not only a problem in Germany, but around the world, Kayser said. "We expect the situation to return to normal by 2023," he added.
Lufthansa is cancelling 2,200 additional flights at its Frankfurt and Munich hubs due to staff shortages.
Two weeks ago, the company announced that it would cancel 900 connections in July. Its low-cost subsidiary Eurowings is also expected to cancel flights.
It was clear very early on that staff shortages would be a problem in the airline industry, Kayser told the newspaper. The Frankfurt Airport, for example, invested heavily in recruitment, but it recognized that it was not possible to gain sufficient staff as quickly as it had hoped.
Lufthansa and Eurowings plan to largely keep the classic holiday routes on the schedule, while flights within Germany and Europe where there are alternative travel options such as rail are to be cut.
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