Lufthansa to complete Q400 returns in 2021

Key Lufthansa shareholder Heinz Hermann Thiele dies aged 79

Heinz Hermann Thiele, the German billionaire industrialist who as of February 2021 owned 12.42% of Lufthansa (LH, Frankfurt Int'l), has died at the age of 79.

Knorr-Bremse AG, the brake-system manufacturer through which he made much of his fortune and where he was deputy chairman and majority shareholder, released a statement that Thiele had passed away on February 23 surrounded by his family in Munich but did not provide a cause of death.

Forbes placed Heinz Hermann Thiele and family at number 91 in its 2020 list of billionaires by net worth, which it put at USD12.9 billion as of July 2020. But according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the tycoon, who also owned half of railroad-equipment maker Vossloh AG, had a USD20.2 billion fortune which made him the fourth-richest person in Germany and 97th in the world.

A native of Mainz and a lawyer by education, Thiele joined the legal department at Knorr-Bremse in the late 1960s before acquiring a controlling stake in the company in the mid-1980s.

As previously reported, the industrialist...

Eurowings Discover to launch under Air Dolomiti's code

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....

New gov’t, new Alitalia plan, involving Lufthansa - report

Assessing the possible solutions to keep Alitalia (AZ, Rome Fiumicino) afloat, Italy’s new government led by economist Mario Draghi is considering taking control of the bankrupt flag carrier as part of a plan that would include a capital raise from Lufthansa (LH, Frankfurt Int'l), the newspaper La Repubblica has reported.

“Alitalia is moving towards a sale of its assets first to the state and then to Lufthansa,” the report claimed.

Previous efforts to find partners for the administrator-led airline, which filed for bankruptcy in 2017, included Lufthansa, but these came to nothing. Rome re-nationalised Alitalia in May.

Another newspaper, La Stampa, reported last week that Giuseppe Leogrande, Alitalia’s chief commissioner, had asked the government for a further EUR150 million euros (USD181 million) to pay salaries for February and keep the airline going.

According to La Repubblica, the operation that the new government is reportedly considering would take place in three stages: first to place Alitalia under the control of its low-cost subsidiary Alitalia CityLiner (CT, Rome Fiumicino), then for Italy’s...