Lufthansa counting on A350 fleet to end Munich long-haul losses

Deutsche Lufthansa AG is banking on Airbus Group SE’s latest A350 wide-body jet to shore up its Munich hub, where the deployment of less efficient planes means normally lucrative long- haul flights are losing money.

The first 15 of 25 A350s ordered by Lufthansa are to be based in the Bavarian city, with the composite-fuselage, twin-engine model providing a 25 percent fuel saving compared with the four-turbine Airbus A340s currently used there.

“The new A350 fleet is a big step toward profitability,’’ Wilken Bormann, who heads Lufthansa’s operations in Munich, said in an interview. Two A350s are now flying from the secondary hub, with the third delivered Saturday, and the number is set to reach six this year and 12 by the end of 2018, he said.

Lufthansa is focusing on Munich after turning all inter-continental routes from its main Frankfurt base profitable last year, terminating some services and introducing a denser seating layout on others. Network airlines typically accept losses on short- haul routes that feed passengers onto longer trips where margins are usually healthier, buoyed by sales of premium seats.

Routes from Munich to Delhi and Boston are already served by the A350, with Mumbai set to become the model’s next destination from April 15, followed by cities in East Asia, Bormann said. Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Seoul and Tokyo all currently use the A340, which has been out of production since 2011.

Chief Executive Officer Carsten Spohr said last month that Munich will become more important to Lufthansa, something Bormann said may mean stationing more aircraft there. Europe’s third-biggest airline has 25 wide- body jets at the hub, including 16 A340s used on about half of the 20-plus long-haul routes, though Bormann didn’t reveal how many are failing to break even. Bloomberg