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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

Lufthansa is to relaunch its FlyNet in-flight internet service from the middle of next year. The airline was one of the pioneers of in-flight wi-fi, launching the Flynet service in 2003 and running it until 2006. The service ended when the company providing the service, Connexion by Boeing, turned it off. At the time, Boeing said that no market for the service had materialised. However, many American airlines now have in-flight wi-fi on large parts of their domestic fleets while OnAir is providing in-flight data services to a numebr of airlines, including British Airways.

source: Times Online

Lufthansa will take full control of BMI British Midland by buying a 20 per cent stake from Scandinavian carrier SAS, a move that will give the German carrier freedom to decide the fate of its Heathrow subsidiary.

Europe’s largest airline will pay SAS  38m ($61m), half for the stake and the other half for SAS relinquishing rights codified in a shareholder agreement in 1999, both airlines said wi thout giving further details.

Taking over the secondlargest UK carrier appears to put Lufthansa into direct competition with British Airways at its Heathrow hub.

source: FT.com

German flag carrier Lufthansa has completed the takeover of rival Austrian Airlines following months of tense negotiations.

The Cologne based airline will pay around €166 million (£150 million) for private Austrian Airlines shares while also paying €350,000 for the stake presently controlled by the Austrian government.

In 2008, 10.7 million passengers flew with the Austrian Airlines Group to 120 different destinations. Austrian Airlines currently operates a fleet of 91 aircraft.

source: travelbite.co.uk