Lufthansa boss Spohr announces a product and quality initiative. The biggest step here: the Lufthansa and Swiss fleets are getting new seats in all classes.
Something has to change, Carsten Spohr agrees. “Especially in international competition, the premium positioning of our airlines is of crucial importance,” said Lufthansa’s CEO on Thursday (4 August) in an interview with journalists. But currently you are not meeting your own expectations and those of your customers.
“Now we will do everything we can to fully meet this requirement once more,” said Spohr. The catering offer has already been stabilized, with which there were major problems in the early summer, and the lounge offer has been expanded once more.
«Broad product and quality initiative»
“In addition to these short-term improvements, we will start a broad product and quality initiative in the fall,” announced Spohr. The CEO did not initially reveal any details – except for one thing. The initiative will result in the seats being renewed in all classes at Lufthansa and Swiss from 2023. “We will install a total of 31,000 seats in our Lufthansa and Swiss aircraft.” To be precise, the Premium Economy at Swiss already got the go-ahead this year.
To this question, whether he the fifth Skytrax star for Lufthansa wants to recapture, says Spohr, he would have liked to keep the highest rating. However, the requirements for a private airline in Europe cannot be met. So now only Asian and state airlines would have five stars.
Meet the requirement, «with or without a fifth star»
In any case, they want to meet the premium claim once more, “with or without a fifth star”. To do this, you first have to overcome the current operational problems and the new seats would then remove any remaining doubts, according to the Lufthansa Group CEO.