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Airline bmi British Midland is to merge its frequent flyer scheme, Diamond Club, with the Miles & More programme of new owner, Lufthansa.

It follows the integration of Miles & More with other Lufthansa subsidiaries including Brussels Airlines, Swiss and Austrian Airlines.

Lufthansa took control of bmi in 2009 after Sir Michael Bishop, the former chairman, exercised an option to sell his controlling stake at a pre-agreed price.

The German airline considered a sale of bmi but it did not attract a sufficiently high price from any interested buyers so began a restructuring scheme.

source: Telegraph.co.uk

Lufthansa is to join British Airways and Air France in revamping its first class cabins ahead of the World Cup in May.

The new first class package will debut in May, ahead of the airline’s inaugural A380 flight to Johannesburg, carrying the German World Cup team.

Lufthansa has confirmed that the new first and business class menus will be designed by Michelin-starred chef Holger Stromberg, the chef to Germany’s national football team.

Despite several airlines opting to reduce their first-class offerings in the wake of the financial crisis, some appear to have opted to innovate to survive.

source: Independent

Lufthansa is set to become one of the world’s first airlines to mix biofuel with traditional kerosene on commercial flights as carriers seek ways to cut soaring fuel costs.

The German flag carrier will start running its engines on some flights on a mix of biofuel and kerosene within two years. Aircraft account for an estimated 2-4 percent of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, which scientists say could cause global temperatures to rise, triggering widespread disease, famine, flooding and drought.

Experts say global aviation emissions could reach 2.4 billion tonnes in 2050, which would be 15-20 percent of all CO2 permitted under a global agreement and a nearly four-fold increase on current levels.

source: Economic Times

Lufthansa pilots in Germany agreed to suspend for two weeks a strike that grounded about 900 flights on Monday.

Some 4,000 Lufthansa pilots took part in a stoppage that was meant to last for four days, leaving thousands of passengers around the world stranded, on concerns the company could try to cut staff costs by shifting jobs to foreign units.

Lufthansa aims to cut 1 billion euros ($1.36 billion) of costs by 2011, to become more lean while expanding abroad.

source: Reuters

Lufthansa, Europe’s largest airline by revenues, is considering legal action to head off a four-day strike by its pilots starting at midnight on Sunday. The dispute threatens to escalate into one of the severest industrial conflicts in recent German history.

Stefan Lauer, board member responsible for personnel, said that Lufthansa’s lawyers would report to him by Monday on options for halting the strike, called this week by Vereinigung Cockpit, the pilots’ trade union.

Cockpit has said its main goal is to secure jobs in Germany and has called on more than 4,000 pilots to take part in the strike , which will also affect Lufthansa Cargo and Germanwings, its low-cost carrier.

source: FT.com

German carrier Lufthansa is to give one million Miles and More miles to the person who comes up with the best nickname for its Airbus A380 aircraft, due to go into service later this year.

The airline has now painted its first two A380 superjumbos in Lufthansa liveries, officially naming them Frankfurt Am Main and Munchen. But the carrier is looking for a “catchy nickname” for its A380 aircraft in general, and is giving away one million frequent flyer miles to the winning suggestion.

Click on this link to propose a name.

source: businesstraveller.com

Lufthansa has become the first major European carrier in 20 years to launch a service to Baghdad.

The German carrier said it was planning to fly to the Iraqi capital and Erbil in the north from Frankfurt and Munich this summer due to high demand and security issues within the country easing.

Lufthansa first started flying to Baghdad in 1956 but halted operation in 1990 because of the Gulf War, when U.S.-led forces reversed Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

fuente: breakingtravelnews.com

British Midland (bmi) has admitted that it may not be able to continue as a going concern beyond next year in the face of an acute funding crisis at the airline.

The airline’s funding situation is sufficiently precarious for Deloitte, its accountant, to warn that there is uncertainty about whether the airline can carry on. The accounts were signed off on October 23 and Deloitte made it clear that there was no guarantee Lufthansa would stand behind its British subsidiary or give it further financial support.

Lufthansa took control of bmi when Sir Michael Bishop, the former chairman, exercised an option to sell his 50 per cent stake to the Germans for about £220 million. Much of bmi’s value lies in its ownership of 11 per cent of the landing slots at Heathrow. Slot pairs have traded for tens of millions of pounds in the past but their value has fallen in the recession. The airline has cut the value of its slots by 20 per cent from £770 million to £616 million.

source: Times Online

Deutsche Lufthansa said on Thursday it had rescheduled some aircraft delivieries that had originally been planned for 2010-2013 to help cut costs amid the global economic crisis.

Airlines around the world have been grounding airplanes and cancelling aircraft orders to cope with lower demand. Plane makers Boeing and rival Airbus are headed for their worst annual order tally in at least 15 years.

source: Reuters

Miles & More members will soon have even more opportunities to take city breaks or book holiday trips to interesting destinations. From 1 December, when Germanwings becomes a new airline partner in Lufthansa’s frequent flyer programme Miles & More, participants in the scheme will also be able to exchange award miles they have earned to date for award flights with Germanwings.

Germanwings offers flights to Split, Barcelona, Salzburg, Rome and Mykonos – to name just a few of the 70 attractive destinations the low-cost carrier flies to in Europe.

source: Media Newswire