Lufthansa (LH, Frankfurt International) will continue with its "Score" cost-cutting programme past its 2015 conclusion date outgoing CEO Christoph Franz has told a press conference. According to Reuters, Franz was of the opinion that additional benefits could still be extracted from the programme.
"I don't believe we've squeezed all the juice out of the fruit yet," he said. "The challenge now is to stay on the ball, and in situations in which the environment is changing, we need to adapt."
Launched in February 2012, Score aims to increase the airline's operating profit by EUR1.5billion (USD2.07million) by 2015 with over 4'000 unique programs having been identified.
“Score is on track. We have achieved our profit and restructuring targets for 2013. And we have created the conditions that will enable us to keep increasing our profits in the years ahead. We are working on further measures to improve earnings, which will enable us to cope with greater headwinds, too,” said Simone Menne, Member of the Executive Board and CFO at Lufthansa.
Among the more critical measures undertaken include the laying off of 3'500 administrative workers as well as the transfer to subsidiary germanwings (4U, Cologne/Bonn) of the airline's non-Frankfurt International and Munich European traffic. Against the backdrop of rising pressure from the likes of Ryanair (FR, Dublin International), Wizz Air (W6, Budapest) and easyJet (London Luton), the switch to germanwings is now beginning to yield results with the low cost carrier now expected to break even next year.
Notwithstanding the threat of LCCs and Gulf carriers on all market fronts, Franz said Lufthansa would be interested in playing a part in market consolidation at some point in the future, but denied any foreseeable tie ups.
"There is nothing planned at the moment though, I want to make that clear," he said.
