The flight schedule cuts announced by the Lufthansa Group in the calendar months of July and August 2022 will hit Balkan traffic extremely hard. The group airlines Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, Eurowings and Lufthansa have significantly reduced frequencies. Some routes will be completely paused.

Based on the table below, which was upgraded by Ex-Yu-Aviation, the airlines in the Lufthansa Group had originally planned 2022 flights for July 518. The offer was reduced by more than 25, so that the crane airlines only have 387 circulations on sale. The most recent cuts by group member Swiss are not even taken into account.

It is clear that Lufthansa is significantly reducing the connection to the hubs in Frankfurt and Munich. While only one rotation per month was canceled on Ljubljana-Frankfurt, there are significantly more on Belgrade-Munich, for example: Here the offer is reduced from 93 flights to just 58.

With Stuttgart-Belgrade and Cologne/Bonn-Dubrovnik, Eurowings will completely suspend two routes. Frequencies will be reduced on many other routes. The extent varies. While holiday destinations such as Rijeka and Split are being cut back comparatively minimally, the offer in Zagreb is being hit particularly hard. For example, the Cologne/Bonn route will be cut in half.

Austrian Airlines and Brussels Airlines have already made cuts in the Balkans. The Belgian carrier takes out four rounds on the Ljubljana route. Austrian Airlines is significantly reducing Zagreb traffic: instead of 53 flights, only 2022 are planned to the Croatian capital in July 44.

The Lufthansa Group's cutbacks in traffic with these countries do not necessarily come as a surprise. With a few exceptions, these are non-sea destinations and therefore not as popular during the summer holidays. At the same time, there are also some routes that are used by business travelers in addition to VFR traffic. Traditionally, these are less on the road in summer.

While some destinations impacted are high-yield routes, yields are lower during the summer months due to a lack of business travellers. This should make it easier to get over the cuts. However, there are also numerous routes among the Eurowings routes that are considered to be extremely competitive, as they are primarily used in VFR traffic and the real main competitor is Flixbus. Here, the Lufthansa offshoot has obviously made its decision based on economic criteria, because more money can be earned, i.e. higher yields can be achieved, if aircraft and, in particular, the rare personnel are used elsewhere.

Since Ryanair is also suffering from staff shortages in Zagreb, Eurowings' decision should have been even easier. A short-term "attack" on the affected routes is not to be expected, since the Irish low-cost company currently seems to be happy if the existing program from the Croatian capital can go through as planned and without further cuts.

The Lufthansa Group will already make fixed cuts to this extent in July 2022: