Lufthansa: more flights from June

Lufthansa plans to start flying more again starting in June, focusing mainly on vacation flights. Frankfurt alone will be offering about 20 destinations again in the second half of the month. This is reported by the German broadcaster ARD based on reports by Bild am Sonntag.

Among the destinations are Heraklion (Crete), Rhodes, Dubrovnik, Faro, Venice, Ibiza and Malaga. There would also be many flights to Mallorca.

The new June flight schedule would put 80 aircraft back in the air. According to the newspaper, citing sources within the company, 160 of the total 760 machines in the Lufthansa Group will be in use by early next month.

Lufthansa is still negotiating with the German government for €9 billion in state aid, including €3 billion in the form of a loan from state-owned bank KfW.

Stumbling point would be that the government wants 20 percent of Lufthansa shares in exchange for support. Lufthansa chief executive Carsten Spohr has always opposed this because, as a commercial company, he wants to be able to decide quickly.

German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier said last weekend that Lufthansa would not have to pay back the state aid until it returned to profit. ‘That could take a couple of years, no one knows.’

According to Altmaier, the government does not want to remain a permanent shareholder of Lufthansa. The move is said to be primarily designed to protect Lufthansa from hostile takeovers.