This is rather annoying … but the thought of purchasing from Russia is worse, me thinks.
I imagine that various EU govts are hedging for more road / rail travel along with supporting local businesses (hotels/motels, restaurants, etc), while they focus on bigger things like heating oil, etc.
Holiday flights are nice, but equally as mandatory as some other necessities?
EU does not have a big weight in SoH fight directly. Even if EU makes deals with Iran, donnie will insist EU buy from the US and not let up SoH blockade. May be a card against current donnie tariffs on EU?
Looking at the destination cities at https://www.lufthansa-city.com/en/information/route-network.html, depending on travel to-from, driving is an option and so are trains (may be more difficult for families with children). These are also extraordinary times.
Dont forget to slap Donnie on the back(****) for all his carefully thought out planning, teamwork, efforts, contributions and successes!!! 8)
Much of the Lufthansa flight reductions come from the early closure of its CityLine subsidiary. Planned well before the Trumpanyahu excursion into Iran.
As you note short haul feeder routes into Frankfurt and Munich.
These are the small airplanes that bring people to fill the wide-body airplanes that cross continents and oceans. I’m sure they evaluated the impact of that. Announces about those flights and the required crews to be done at the proper time.
A big question is how much is refined domestically. Germany for instance produces 70% of the kerosene domestically, Italy refines more than it consumes in crude derivatives so it’s a net exporter.
But of course that goes up in smoke if there’s no oil. Europe (EU, EFTA, UK) appears to import 6-8% of its crude via the SoH, that should be replaceable (from elsewhere or the local reserves). So we should be fine in this regard.
Another aspect I do find worrying in this situation is the increasing dependence on Indian crude derivatives. Its refineries are fed in no small part by Russian crude delivered via the North-South Corridor which unfortunately ends in Bander-E-Abbas in the SoH. And of course there’s east Asia’s competing demand coupeld with its ability and likely willingness to pay premium prices.
And of course there’s the LNG, Europe’s reserves should be getting filled during the warm months for the coming winter, this doesn’t happen as long as the SoH is blocked. America’s LNG might not be enough to fill the gap.
Most of this could be avoided without the EU’s ideologically-driven politics of banning Russia. This is largely a self-inflicted problem.
Agreed, not only that the governments are trying their damndest to paint Russia as the enemy so that gigaeuros can be flushed into the coffers of arms manufactures.
Of course the roadkill is social services, health services and pensions.
Not the airlines. An airline that has been in serious financial distress for a few years now. Spirit is universally hated by US consumers. They exist only because their prices are very cheap.
Their business model is unsustainable, meaning the markets won’t go near them. But their CEO managed to get the ear of Trump so …
It won’t return to the previous prices come what may. Greed on behalf of the petroleum companies and the need for them to charge us to repair the damage will ensure it remains considerably higher forever.
It seems there’s an energy crunch, short flights are being cancelled by the hundreds in Europe.
At the same time, extra flights were scheduled across the Atlantic for the football world cup and it seems there is extremely low demand for them. Just got a round-trip ticket to fly to Monterrey (MX) for 700 francs for the summer. Zurich, 1 long stop in Madrid for wine, whatever has a bellota label, and a lamb stew. Next day arriving to the embracing 40° C of summer in northern Mexico.
So, are local airlines around here playing games and scaring people to motivate them to buy tickets for the rest of the year ASAP? Or flights across the Atlantic only have challenges to refuel here and not on the other side of the ocean?
Refueling the car during the 1st year of the Ukraine war was more expensive than today (even without accounting for inflation). Air travel during Covid was 3-4x times more than today. What is happening? Allegedly, it’s WW3 + energy crunch. Are we blind and a crisis about to hit without warning?
Anyway, I remain a worker bee preparing for long winter.
No airlines are not cancelling short haul flights en mass. Some pruning is going on, particularly as demand is evolving due to the crisis. Flight to the ME have been curtailed significantly meaning those aircraft are being redeployed onto other routes, which is actually increasing capacity on some routes, which tends to drive down prices, not up.
The availability of aviation fuel is a concern, and the airlines are being cautious.
But No Panic!
Edited to add: LH first announced their intention to close CityLine in June 2024 sometime in 2026/7. In February this year they dealt with staffing issues reassigning people to related companies. The April announcement it was advancing plans wasn’t unexpected.
So far, I’ve only seen a low cost airline from Spain (volotea) playing games in their T&Cs. They do thing’s differently. Meaning the ticket price is not the final price, it’s subject to oil price variations:
Swiss farmers that work also as national councilors have a curious idea: restrict flying, so there’s more oil for tractors and harvesters.
The fun thing is that the refining process yields more or less fixed yields of gasoline, diesel and kerosene. It’s not possible to squeeze more diesel out of a barrel of oil just because you want it.
“Most of this could be avoided without the EU’s ideologically-driven politics of banning Russia. This is largely a self-inflicted problem” Where have you been the last few years? Merkel tried appeasement with Russia and made Germany dependent on Russian gas - not a good idea. Russia turns from communism to state run capitalism and then invades a sovereign country, the Ukraine. Almost all the countries on Russia’s Western borders have good reason to believe Russia will not stop if they are successful in the the Ukraine. This is not just idealogy. It is a matter of self preservation.
That has been Putin’s excuse. There is nothing to back it up. What Russia does have to face is the loss of its empire or “sphere of influence”. Fortunately for the world, large empires are not the future. The USA and even China are going to have enough problems just keeping their present land areas stable. But foreign adventures are a good way to keep the play station boys happy.
