Lufthansa Group Is Working on Another Turnaround

Oct 2, 2025

More Reading on This Topic: Lufthansa

Lufthansa Group (LHG) has never been the model of efficiency, which is rather shocking since that’s exactly what you’d expect from a Germany company. But you need to look no further than the number of different subsidiary airlines — at least partial owners of Lufthansa, SWISS, Austrian, Brussels, ITA, Discover, Eurowings, Edelweiss, Lufthansa CityLine, Lufthansa City Airlines, Air Dolomiti, and SunExpress plus probably a few others that were started in the last 10 minutes — to realize that there is work to be done. At the company’s recent Capital Markets Day, it promised to do just that… again.

The more than 100-page presentation read like a primer on everything wrong with LHG and exactly how it would be fixed. Consultants clearly made good money putting together a “Value creation” plan with four pillars. Two of those involve Lufthansa Cargo and Lufthansa Technik, so I won’t address them. But on the airline side, the goal is to go “from a group of airlines to ONE Airline Group.” In case you were wondering, this will be a “Streamlined and synergetic oprating model.” Good job, consultants.

In this plan,SWISS, Austrian, Brussels and Eurowings will have an “efficiency program” while Lufthansa itself will have a “turnaround.” And all of the airlines in the group will participate in a fleet modernization. That’s going to increase profit by 2.5 billion euros by 2028. Sure it will.

I didn’t realize Lufthansa itself was such a mess that it needed a turnaround, but there is plenty of data here showing an operational problem alongside other issues. But overall, the main goal seems to be to take away more of the independence each airline has and make them as similar as possible without breaking them completely. That means things like having a more consistent hard product on board with the new Lufthansa Allegris and SWISS Senses business class seats as their prime example. Forget that these experiences are actually very complex with a whole number of different seat types with varying costs. At least the whole fleet will eventually have that same level of complexity.

And then there’s the fleet discussion. On the narrowbody side, LHG has been relatively centered around the A320ceo and now neo families. But SWISS and ITA both fly the A220 while both Austrian and Air Dolomiti use the E190/195 and Lufthansa Cityline flies the CRJ-900. But those are minor fleets. Don’t worry, however. Because LHG has now bought 40 B737-8 MAX aircraft to go to Eurowings, and it looks like some of those will have actually domestic First Class-style seating for medium-haul flying unlike the full-service airlines in the group which have Eurobusiness with a blocked middle. That’s… a strategy, I suppose.

Despite that new complexity, it’s the widebody side that needs to be consolidated even more. Here is how things look today, according to Airfleets.

Lufthansa Group Widebody Fleet Counts by Airline

^{Data via Airfleets}

This company is all over the map. And now, it will try to make some progress… but not much, actually. The B767s at Austrian will be gone next year and the A340s at Lufthansa, SWISS, and Edelweiss are out in 2027. (Can we just take a moment to think about the fact that it still flies that many A340s?) Other than that, the A330-200s will go away but the -300s will remain. The 777-200s will disappear, but there will still be B777-300ERs. And the B747-400s will retire, but the -8s stick around.

In their place? Well, Lufthansa Group has more B787-9s and A350-900s coming in to complement the existing fleet. ITA, however, already has an order for some A330-900neos to join the fleet, and that’s not changing. Then LHG will also take 15 A350-1000s alongside the slightly larger B777-9 which is also pretty similar in size to the B747-8. And then there’s the A380. What will happen to that, I have no idea. Apparently LHG has no idea either. It just has a big question mark next to the fleet type. I’m not kidding:

This apparently counts as a fleet simplication. Only at Lufthansa Group would that be possible.

In the end, Lufthansa is really trying to make an airline group that travelers want to fly… specfically an airline group that old-man Jake Gyllenhaal wants to fly.

Or at least, it’ll be a group he wants to fly in 2030 when 95 percent of the fleet will have the already long-delayed new business class product onboard.

This company has always felt challenging to fix, and this presentation makes me feel only slightly better about that. There is a long way to go before LHG can compete with the efficiency of an IAG which long ago centralized core functions. Even Air France-KLM is slowly catching up, but it just has fewer airlines brands to try and synthesize anyway.

In the meantime, I assume that LHG will just continue to push out turnaround plans concocted by consultants. It seems to be that as long as it looks like it’s doing something, it will keep on keeping on.

Brett

4 responses to “Lufthansa Group Is Working on Another Turnaround”

Bobber

Oct 2, 2025 at 4:38 am

Don’t diss the A340, Brett! Flew DTW-FRA last year in one of those old birds and the ride was amazing. Yes, I know they are old, and the 300’s are underpowered – but at least they are interesting. I will be sad to see them go when Lufthansa finally retires them.

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See_Bee

Oct 2, 2025 at 5:32 am

It’s going to take some strong-arming by the central corporate team to (potentially) make this happen. It feels like alliances, airline groups, and equity partners have been touting the benefits of synergies for decades but can never fully execute (i.e. group purchasing, etc.). Each airline has their distinct brands, different service requirements, unqiue route map, egotistical executives, etc. that makes this challenging to pull off

I sense that only IAG has really been successful due to their ownership structure and centralized back-office functions, which LH group may be trying to more closely replicate now

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1. JT8D
  
  Oct 2, 2025 at 6:06 am
  
  LHG owns these other carriers, so, in theory, it’s just a matter of will. Pronounced in auf Deutsch with a “v” sound.
  
  I mean, how hard is it to say “these are the approved airplanes, you can have these and only these?” Same thing with seats. You can have these and only these. The covers can be any color you like, but the underlying seats will be the same. Swiss, Austrian, Belgian, etc, rear ends aren’t that different from German. Etc.
  
  The proliferation of brands from LHG over the years suggests that they suffer from the usual problem. The tasks they need to solve are hard, and make you sound boring at parties. But that’s what makes a great airline – relentless focus on operations, on costs, on revenues.
  
  It’s much more fun to pal around with consultants, who tell you what a fine leader of industry you are, a visionary strategic thinker. And invent yet another LHG brand. That makes you sound far more exciting at parties.
  
  I mean, great if LHG is now focused on those boring things, but weird that it needs an initiative. I mean, isn’t that just a normal part of the job? Why do you need an initiative to do what you were supposed to be doing all along?
  
  That deck starts with “we’re number 1” – well, not by any metric your shareholders care about, you’re not. Ryanair is by far the most valuable airline in Europe, and IAG is far more valuable among legacy carriers.
  
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2. Alan Z
  
  Oct 2, 2025 at 6:14 am
  
  Your very first comment is at the very HEART of the issue. Senior mgmt too cute by half. Spohr spun off airlines from LH to save money by giving lower salaries, and other steps to save money, that he couldn’t do with LH. Then he went and tried to make old planes fly longer by having LH Technik, one of the very best maint. companies to keep old planes running. Then he stockpiled more old planes to fill in when the other old planes had to have heart transplants.
  
  Then, there was the absolutely stupid mistake of not ordering the 789 when BA and others did. Now he waits. Then he compounds it by not ordering very good off the shelf seats for the 789, 748 and 350. He has to design his own. That takes forever, and costs dearly. Oh, and he must have, for biz class, three separate seats, each mfg. by a different company. So, at the end of the pipeline, the U.S. government has to certify three differently mfg seats. And let’s not forget the FC suite on the 350. Supposed to be for two people, but only one entrance. So, your partner has to climb over you. Only one tray table. Only one monitor. Who the F designed this abortion? And who approved it.
  
  So, to your point, strong-arming by corporate mgmt. They are the ones that screwed it up. Especially Spohr.
  
  But, unsaid, could be some good news. Next year they celebrate their 100th Anny. Big to-do’s will take place. And what multiple FA’s have told me is that they go to sleep praying that Spohr takes the opportunity to retire.
  
  p.s. Living in Malta, I fly LH very frequently, world-wide. I would state that the quality and service of their FA’s are outstanding. They do want the company to succeed. As an aside I fly their 748 FC at least three times a year. No matter what fleet they settle on, it will always be my favorite. Sitting up front, above the pilot.
  
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