The airlines still see themselves severely restricted in their business despite increasing vaccination rates. It is uncertain whether trips to the USA will be possible again this year.
According to Lufthansa, Europeans will probably only be able to return to the USA around Christmas.
A relaxation of the entry restrictions due to the corona pandemic can realistically only be expected in the late fourth quarter, said Lufthansa board member Harry Hohmeister on Thursday at the online industry congress of the magazine “fvw TravelTalk”. At first he was too optimistic, assuming that this could happen in July. Group boss Carsten Spohr initially bet on September, but recently no longer trusted himself with a forecast.
The world aviation association IATA accused the governments of unnecessarily prolonging the airline crisis. “This is no longer a crisis as a result of the pandemic, but a crisis as a result of the government’s reactions to the pandemic in the form of restrictions,” said IATA boss Willie Walsh at the Congress. In view of the increasing vaccination rates in many countries, he called for vaccinated people to be allowed back to international travel without restrictions.
Many restrictions made sense at the start of the pandemic, when the world faced an unknown virus and health systems needed to be saved from collapse, Walsh said. Today, however, the situation is very different in view of the increasing vaccination rates in many countries.
The fact that US flights pay off for Lufthansa even with comparatively low demand is primarily due to the booming airfreight business. Lufthansa packs its passenger jets almost “up to the roof with cargo,” said board member Hohmeister. Therefore, the group does not want to reduce its flight offer on the North Atlantic routes after the EU has again removed the United States from the list of third countries for which corona restrictions are no longer to apply. According to Hohmeister, he cannot understand the logic of the United States maintaining entry bans. After all, the vaccination rate in the USA and Germany is at a comparable level.
A few days ago, CEO Spohr predicted a “long, cold winter” for the airline group, especially since China, too, is likely to loosen travel restrictions in the second quarter of 2022. In normal years, Lufthansa generates a large part of its profit with long-haul flights to North America and Asia.
In the meantime, according to Hohmeister, the discount war between the airlines is likely to continue for the time being. It will probably never come to an end that airlines “throw capacities into the market” that they would only get rid of at low prices, said the manager at the online industry congress. In the short term, that made him pessimistic, said Hohmeister. However, the industry must work on the restructuring of its balance sheets and the financial “impact holes” from the Corona crisis. He therefore assumes a stabilized and rather rising price level in the long term. Ticket prices, some of which would be in the single-digit euro range, make no sense not only ecologically, but also economically.
The manager expects people to catch up on their postponed travel needs on a large scale after dealing with the pandemic. «During the Corona crisis, consumers saved between 200 and 300 billion euros in consumer spending in Germany alone. He doesn’t even know what to do with the money. ” According to travel analyzes, there will be a lot of catching up to do in the next three to five years.
Jane Stock is a technology author, who has written for 24 Hours World. She writes about the latest in technology news and trends, and is always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to improve his audience’s experience.
