Following a decline in demand caused by the coronavirus, Lufthansa Group will reduce capacity by up to 25 per cent.

The route cancellations and frequency adjustments correspond to a calculated capacity of 150 aircraft, of which 125 are short- and medium-haul and are 25 long haul.

The Lufthansa Group fleet currently comprises of approximately 770 aircraft, including some 180 long-haul aircraft.

Route cancellations and frequency adjustments will be implemented successively, and the passengers affected will be informed about the changes and rebooking options.

Until the end of March, Lufthansa is cancelling a total of approximately 7,100 flights (including 3,750 flights from Frankfurt to 75 airports, and 3,350 flights from Munich to 65 airports).

The focus is on domestic flights from the Frankfurt hub to Berlin, Munich and Hamburg as well as from Munich to Berlin, Hamburg, Düsseldorf, Cologne, Bremen and Hanover.

These are high-frequency connections, some of which are operated up to every half an hour by Lufthansa.

Numerous rebooking options are available.

A second focus of the route cancellations and frequency adjustments is Italy.

This includes the destinations Milan, Venice, Rome, Turin, Verona, Bologna, Ancona and Pisa.

In addition, the airline had already decided last week to suspend flights from Germany to mainland China until April 24th.

The connection to Tehran will remain cancelled until April 30th.

Lufthansa is also reducing frequencies in its route network to and from Hong Kong and Seoul (Korea), among others.

Flights between Munich and Hong Kong will be suspended until April 24th.

Passengers will be rebooked via Frankfurt and Zurich if possible during this period.

Israel

At the same time, Lufthansa is pulling out of Israel.

Earlier in the week, the destination barred entry to almost all non-residents arriving from France, Germany, Spain, Austria and Switzerland.

As a result, Lufthansa, Swiss and Austrian Airlines will cancel all their flights to Tel Aviv and Eilat as of Sunday.

Flights will be suspended until at least March 28th.

For operational reasons, some flights to Tel Aviv scheduled to depart this Friday and Saturday have already been cancelled as flight crews are also affected by these new restrictions.