Lufthansa selling only most expensive fares on European flights

Due to the strained booking and air travel situation, Lufthansa has drastically limited its ticket offering for European and domestic flights.

Over several days, only the most expensive fares can be booked for flights occurring in the entire month of July. On Friday, the company confirmed relevant information coming from online forums for frequent flyers.

The temporary measure is intended to keep seats free for rebookings resulting from the previous flight cancellations. These changes are to be entered into the system in the coming days. Lufthansa has canceled more than 3,000 flights in July and August due to massive capacity problems at airports and within its own organization. However, the company said it would operate 95 percent of all planned flights in the summer.

The goal is to offer all passengers affected by a flight cancellation an alternative travel option, a spokesman in Frankfurt said. “To ensure this, the company has reduced availability on Lufthansa flights for new bookings in July.”

Users report economy ticket prices in class “Y” of more than 1,000 euros from Frankfurt to London or Dubai. One-way domestic tickets from Frankfurt to Hamburg or Berlin should cost 400 euros. In business class, too, tickets are now only available in the highest and therefore most expensive booking class “J”.

Only after the rebookings have been completed does Lufthansa intend to reopen the system and, depending on the availability of seats, also reopen the cheaper fares. According to information from company circles, this could be on Wednesday (July 6). The “Handelsblatt” reports that the supervisory board of the MDax group will also address the flight chaos once again on this date. The special meeting was called under pressure from employee representatives who felt they had not been sufficiently informed by the Board of Management.

(Orig. text: dpa / Translation: Carol Kloeppel)