Lufthansa mulls further fleet cuts, including all A380s

Lufthansa (LH, Frankfurt Int’l) is contemplating cutting its fleet beyond the 100 aircraft announced earlier this year in a move that could see all A380-800s and B747-400s permanently phased-out, Bloomberg has reported citing internal sources. Besides the A380s and the B747-400s, the German carrier would also potentially retire the bulk of its A340-300s and some narrowbody aircraft. The details of the proposed cuts have yet to be firmed. According to the ch-aviation fleets advanced module, net of the cuts announced earlier this year, Lufthansa still has eight A380-800s which it tentatively plans to return to service going forward. The airline also owns seventeen A340-300s and thirteen B747-400s. However, Lufthansa was not looking to retire all of its quadjets, as it would keep both the B747-8s (of which it currently operates 19) and at least some of the A340-600s (twelve). In August, the carrier said in an internal memo that the outright retirement of all of its quadjet aircraft was also on the table. According to sources, a final decision could be approved by the board by the end of September. Among the largest carriers in Europe, Air France formally retired all of its A380-800s as a result of a COVID-induced plunge in demand, British Airways (BA, London Heathrow) retired all of its B747-400s (although not its A380-800s), while Iberia (IB, Madrid Barajas) phased-out its A340-600s. Among the continent’s flag carriers, SAS Scandinavian Airlines (SK, Copenhagen Kastrup) and Swiss (LX, Zurich) (together with subsidiary Edelweiss Air (WK, Zurich)) continue to formally operate quadjet passenger aircraft, namely A340-300s, although the Scandinavian airline does not use the aircraft at this time, while Edelweiss only uses its A340s sporadically.