Overview

• Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr, at the Frankfurt AGM, justified the creation of low-cost affiliates like Discover, Edelweiß, Eurowings, and City Airlines to mitigate high domestic costs and expand destinations.
• The core Lufthansa airline remains the only loss-making unit in the group, attributed to delayed aircraft deliveries and elevated operational and labor costs in Germany.
• The Vereinigung Cockpit union demands immediate negotiations on pilot benefits and warns of potential strikes if talks fail by the end of May.
• Unions criticize the strategy of shifting short-haul routes to non-unionized subsidiaries, calling it internal destructive competition.
• Spohr urged the German government to lower state fees for security and air traffic control, arguing that current costs hinder domestic growth and push expansion abroad.