Lufthansa cancels flights due to the fuel prices: these are your rights

The oil prices are rising, airlines are searching for different types of opportunities to reduce their costs. But how will this affect you as a passenger? Read your rights if your flight has been cancelled.

Lufthansa cancels flights

To save fuel, Lufthansa will cancel 20,000 short distance flights. Since the war in the Middle East the prices for kerosene have risen drastically. Cancelling these flights will help save around 40,000 tons of fuel.

The exact plan will be presented by the end of April. They already made some changes. CityLine is a subsidiary of Lufthansa and it will cut 120 daily flights from their schedule. These are European flights.

Lufthansa CityLine stops

Lufthansa announced they will stop their CityLine in 2028. The reason is to save costs, but the process will be sooner than expected. The high fuel prices and the costs from the labour disputes are the cause for the early cancellation of the CityLine.

Short distance flights are temporarily being taken off of the flight schedule. These are routes from Frankfurt to Bydgoszcz en Rzeszów (Poland) and Stavanger (Norway). The connections from the junction Zürich, Vienna, Brussels and Rome are being expanded. This way the accessibility to the worldwide route network will be kept for passengers.

Other airlines

There are also other airlines who are trying to decrease their fuel use. Airlines like Cathay Pacific, AirAsia X, Delta Airlines and Air New Zealand are also cancelling routes to save fuel.

For the next month 80 return flights are being cancelled by KLM. These are flights with destinations to London and Düsseldorf. KLM flies to Europe multiple times.

These flights are currently not profitable enough due to the rising kerosane prices. It is expected that the first cancellation will be announced in the last week of April. It is probably about flights who are not fully booked and they are easily rebooked.

My rights

It is very frustrating if your Lufthansa flight is cancelled. In this case, you are entitled to a refund of your ticket or rebooked for another flight.

Airlines have the right to cancel their flights, but there are rules referencing the announcement of the cancellation. You’d might even be eligible to compensation up to €600.

If a cancellation is announced for more than 14 days before departure, you have no right to compensation. Did they notify you 14 days in advance, you may be entitled for compensation. The amount of the compensation depends on the flight distance, but it can be up to 600 euro.