German flag carrier Lufthansa has confirmed it will cancel roughly 20,000 flights between now and October after previously announcing the shutdown of its CityLine subsidiary. The airline says the reductions mainly affect short‑haul services it deems uneconomical and are intended to cut costs and fuel consumption as kerosene prices have jumped amid the Middle East conflict.
Several direct routes from Frankfurt have been at least temporarily discontinued, including flights to Bydgoszcz and Rzeszow in Poland and to Stavanger in Norway. Ten additional connections — Heringsdorf and Stuttgart (Germany), Gdansk and Wroclaw (Poland), Cork (Ireland), Ljubljana (Slovenia), Rijeka (Croatia), Sibiu (Romania), Trondheim (Norway) and Tivat (Montenegro) — will be rerouted through other Lufthansa hubs such as Munich, Vienna, Zurich, Brussels and Rome.
Lufthansa says the cancellations announced so far will save more than 40,000 tonnes of kerosene. The carrier noted that kerosene prices have roughly doubled since the start of the recent escalation involving the US, Israel and Iran, putting pressure on the economics of short‑haul routes.
The airline expects to secure “stable fuel provisions” for the summer holiday period and plans to publish more details of a broader “flight optimization plan” at the end of April. Passengers affected by cancellations will be offered alternatives or reroutings via partner hubs.
Lufthansa described the moves as temporary network adjustments in response to sharply higher fuel costs and shifting demand rather than a permanent scaling-back of its short‑haul offering.