Swiss cash cow in German Lufthansa group: Now Switzerland wants to improve prices and punctuality

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Switzerland is leaving the crisis behind. Current CEO Dieter Vranckx, 50, announced the highest profit in the company’s history on Thursday. The subsidiary of the Lufthansa Group operated flights worth at least 718 million francs last year. This is more than double the approximately 330 million francs the Germans spent to buy all of Switzerland in 2005.

Despite fewer passengers last year, Switzerland owes its record profits to high prices and its quasi-monopoly position at Zurich Airport. The Lufthansa Group’s market share here reaches an impressive 80 percent.

But the outgoing CFO assured that profits from the airline group’s Swiss cash cow would not trickle down to Germany. Markus Binkert (51) emphasizes: “Lufthansa is investing disproportionately heavily in Switzerland.” In the long term, the money will be used for new aircraft, new employees (300 new jobs will be created per long-haul aircraft) and sustainability initiatives. From 2025 the latter will cost Switzerland more money than the former. The reason: The blending ratio of sustainable fuel needs to increase from 2 percent to 70 percent by 2050. This results in costs running into millions that the airline itself cannot cover, so passengers are asked to pay as well. The airline says flight prices will continue to increase in the long term.

Will the rise continue? It also depends on how stable Switzerland can keep its flight schedule. This way, flights take place as advertised and there are very few cancellations.

Focused operational issues

That’s why Switzerland wants to increase its punctuality this year. “We are already pretty stable, but we still need to improve on punctuality,” says Vranckx. With 60 percent of all flights last year this was inadequate, though mostly through no fault of their own. While the record results are being presented, it is aimed to increase this rate to 80 percent. Punctuality and customer satisfaction are among the topics of the newly appointed COO Oliver Buchhofer (47); this includes a seat on the Swiss management team, now expanded to four people.

But evil tongues claim that Buchhofer has a quota Swiss in management. Since January, CCO Heike Birlenbach (57) and since May CFO Dennis Weber (44), both German, have been sitting on the board. The successor of CEO Dieter Vranckx, who moved to Frankfurt, will probably come from Germany or Austria. Swiss wants to make a name for itself here soon.

Source :Blick