German airline Lufthansa and its low-cost subsidiary Eurowings are scrapping over 1,000 flights in the busy vacation month of July due to staff shortages.
Lufthansa has cancelled 900 domestic and intra-Europe flights to and from its Frankfurt and Munich hubs for July; Eurowings also had to scrap several hundred flights, the airline announced in a statement on Wednesday.
"The entire aviation industry, especially in Europe, is currently suffering from bottlenecks and staff shortages. This affects airports, ground handling services, air traffic control, and also airlines," the company said.
All cancelled flights were initially planned on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, and together account for 5% of the company's weekend offer. Lowcost airline Eurowings stated that it is also "forced to take several hundred flights off the system" in July in order to "stabilise the tourist offer."
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The company stressed that passengers will be informed immediately about the cancellations, and rebooked if possible. Passengers in Germany can also travel to the hubs in Frankfurt and Munich by train.
Swiss Air Lines – also part of the Lufthansa group – already announced on Tuesday that a number of flights, mainly within Europe, would be cancelled in the coming weeks due to staff shortages.
Earlier this week, Belgium's largest airline Brussels Airlines (which also belongs to the Lufthansa group) announced that it will cancel 148 flights during the summer.
For Brussels Airlines, however, the scrapped flights are not the result of a staff shortage. Instead, the company made the decision to reduce the workload in an effort to appease staff, after warnings of a three-day strike were issued.
During the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns and travel bans, many airlines and airports in Europe let a significant number of employees go and are now struggling to find new staff to satisfy the growing demand for air travel.
