Eurowings plans 10-percent fare hike amid flight chaos in Germany

The subsidiary of German national carrier Lufthansa is facing “cost increases that amount to at least 100 million euros ($101 million) at
Eurowings alone”, chief executive Jens Bischof told the Rheinische Post newspaper.

“As a result, we will have to adjust our fares – which are already about 10 percent more expensive than in 2019 – upwards by at least another 10 percent,” he said.

Fare increases were the only way to respond to spiralling oil prices, Bischof said, warning that the era of super-cheap flights was “clearly over”.

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“Flying is becoming more expensive and must also become more expensive” for consumers, he said.

The Eurowings boss took a swipe at the low-cost airline industry for its race to the bottom in recent years.

“Economically as well as ecologically, it did not make much sense for aggressive competitors to paint a completely false picture of our industry with air fares the price of a cinema ticket,” he said.

Staff shortages as the airline industry attempts to bounce back from the coronavirus pandemic have led to chaotic scenes in German airports and thousands of cancelled flights.

Lufthansa on Friday said it had cancelled a further 770 flights in the coming week, blaming “bottlenecks and staff shortages”.

“The main cause of this is that we are experiencing a jump in traffic volume of over 90 percent within a few months,” the airline said, warning that further cancellations were also possible in August.

“Nobody is happy about the image of our industry at the moment – least of all us,” Bischof said, insisting that Eurowings was working around the clock to improve the situation.

Last-minute cancellations were “very clearly on a downward trend”, he said, and the airline was also seeing a decrease in sickness-related absences