The airlines of the Lufthansa Group – Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, Lufthansa and SWISS – have reached a major milestone in their endeavours to modernise their present product structures.

A number of collaborations with various partners in the airline distribution segment have been successfully pursued over the last few weeks.

The efforts to develop and establish new “direct connect” booking channels are generating strong interest among the industry partners.

“The market is clearly ready for innovations and developments of this kind,” explained Jens Bischof, chief commercial officer of Lufthansa German Airlines.

“Our realignment of our distribution has prompted an intensive exchange of views and experiences within our industry.”

“This process has had its share of controversy, too,” Bischof concedes.

“But we are still as convinced as ever that offering advanced and, at the same time, substantially cheaper additional booking channels – that also allow us to better present our products – is in our customers’ best interests.

“And that’s why we consistently pursue the further development of our distribution channels.”

As planned, the airlines of the Lufthansa Group are now taking a further major step in implementing their new commercial strategy by ensuring that from today, the costs of bookings made via global distribution systems are met more fairly and transparently by the users involved.

To this end, a new “distribution cost charge” of €16 will now be applied to any ticket issued via GDS.

Customers of the Lufthansa Group can obtain their tickets without having to pay the new DCC by making their bookings via the member airlines’ websites, via an airline service centre or at an airport ticket desk.