Austrian Airlines sees strength in flexible network

Lufthansa sees no future for A380s but will add B787-9s

Lufthansa (LH, Frankfurt Int'l) is unlikely to ever reactivate its fourteen mothballed A380-800s and will instead boost its medium-size widebody fleet with at least some of its twenty ordered B787-9s, Chief Executive Carsten Spohr said during a presentation of the company's annual results.

"At Lufthansa German Airlines, fourteen A380-800s and ten A340-600s, among others, have been permanently decommissioned," he said.

The group's annual financial report lists six Airbus double-deckers as "scheduled for retirement" and the remaining eight just as "temporarily decommissioned". Spohr, however, clarified that from today's perspective, there was no chance that the latter would ever be reactivated.

In the annual report, the group detailed that the distinction was mostly due to the fact that the six aircraft will be sold back to Airbus in 2022 and 2023. Lufthansa announced the transaction in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.

"The A340-600 sub-fleets and the eight A380s remaining after the agreed sale of six aircraft in 2022 and 2023 have been fully decommissioned for several years," Lufthansa Group said...

Austrian Airlines sells three B767s to MDI

Austrian Airlines (OS, Vienna) has announced it has found a buyer for three of its B767-300(ER)s - Texan aircraft, engines, and parts trader MonoConque Diversified Investments (MDI).

The first of the three Boeing widebodies, OE-LAT (msn 25273), is scheduled to ferry to Marana in early March 2021. The 29.5-year-old aircraft is the oldest of Austrian Airlines' six B767-300(ER)s and has been inactive and parked at Vienna airport since January 9, 2021.

The flag carrier said the second B767 to be ferried to the United States will be OE-LAX (msn 27095), which is the second-oldest at 28.3 years of age. The redelivery flight is scheduled for May 2021. The third B767 is OE-LAW (msn 26417) although the airline did not provide an expected retirement date. Both OE-LAX and OE-LAW continue to be active on revenue operations, although with very low utilisation.

Austrian Airlines plans to continue operating its other three B767-300(ER)s, which are markedly younger (20.4, 21.6, and 22.2 years old, respectively). It owns all six aircraft, according to the ch-aviation...

Lufthansa considers downgauging order book to smaller types

Lufthansa (LH, Frankfurt Int'l) is in talks with both Airbus and Boeing about switching some its outstanding widebody orders to smaller types, Lufthansa Group Chief Executive Carsten Spohr said during a London School of Economics German Symposium.

"We are putting many four-engined long-range aircraft out of the fleet and this creates a certain need for smaller long-range aircraft," he said.

As reported by Bloomberg, Spohr said that both manufacturers had responded constructively but did not go into details, He did, however, underline that demand for business traffic may never return to pre-COVID levels as many companies have now embraced remote virtual communication technologies.

According to the ch-aviation fleets advanced module, Lufthansa's order book for widebody aircraft consists of twenty-six A350-900s (on top of 17 already delivered), twenty B777-9s, and twenty B787-9s. It has none of the smaller A330neo on order.

Spohr said the airline was in separate discussions with Embraer, although he did not offer any further details as to the substance of these talks....

Klagenfurt, Austria airport owner eyes own airline