Germany’s Lufthansa will continue with measures to cut costs and drive revenue even after its current restructuring programme, dubbed Score and due to run only until 2015, has ended, its outgoing chief executive said.
“We are looking at what will be done after 2015,” Christoph Franz told journalists, just a couple of weeks before he hands over the reins of Germany’s largest airline to Carsten Spohr.
Lufthansa has identified 4,000 different projects under the current Score programme, which aims to increase operating profit by €1.5 billion in 2015 when compared with 2011.
Measures range from big structural changes such as expanding its Germanwings low cost carrier to smaller measures suggested by employees, such as allowing customers to bid for business seats on Austrian Airlines in an auction process.
Lufthansa also plans to create joint check-in desks for its group airlines outside of their home countries and is working to reduce turnaround times for intercontinental flights.
The group wants to cut the amount of time a long-haul jet spends on the ground at airport gates to around 110 minutes from 160 minutes.
“I don’t believe we’ve squeezed all the juice out of the fruit yet,” Franz said.
Rather than being dissolved in 2015 as originally planned, the Score project team will be kept in place.
Consultants have said airlines would do better to have constant efforts to improve results, rather than just starting restructuring programmes that run for a limited time and could affect employee motivation.