Lufthansa will cancel twenty thousand European flights in the summer season. He wants to save on fuel.

Deutsche Lufthansa AG will cut 20,000 unprofitable short-haul flights from its summer schedule for Europe to save on jet fuel, the price of which has doubled since the start of the Iran war.

“The flight restrictions will represent 1 percent of available seat kilometers and will save approximately 40,000 tons of jet fuel,” Europe’s largest airline group said in a statement late Tuesday. The move comes after the carrier announced last week that it would close its regional Cityline division and retire 27 older, fuel-intensive aircraft.

The company has taken some of the most radical measures of any global airline since the conflict began, while also grappling with strikes by pilots and cabin crew.

The airline canceled the first 120 flights on Tuesday, effective until the end of May. Affected passengers have been informed of the cancellations. Flights from Frankfurt to Bydgoszcz and Rzeszow in Poland and to Stavanger in Norway are temporarily canceled. The company will announce more extensive flight restrictions until the end of the summer flying season in late April or early May.

Global capacity in the industry fell by about 3 percentage points in May, according to data compiled by analytics firm Cirium, with all but one of the 20 largest airlines significantly cutting flights. “We are revising our original growth forecast for this year of 4 to 6 percent and are considering a decline of up to 3 percent under certain conditions,” the company said in a statement.

The German airline is seeking to boost profitability through a plan to cut 4,000 administrative jobs by 2030 and shift more short-haul flights to low-cost units such as City Airlines and Discover, where crew costs are up to 40 percent lower than at the parent airline.

WT.24