Lufthansa to close Lufthansa Cargo?

[PT6A]

March 26, 2012

Lufthansa's air freight arm may give up on its freighter fleet should a recently imposed ban on night flights at Frankfurt airport be confirmed by a court in Leipzig on April 4, the unit's chief executive told a German magazine.
The current solution of scheduling take-offs and landings only before 2200 CET and after 0500 CET was "just a stopgap. It costs money and does not pay," Karl Ulrich Garnadt told Focus, according to an article published on Monday.
If necessary Lufthansa Cargo may have to part ways with its freighter fleet in the long-term, consisting of 18 McDonnell Douglas MD 11 planes, Focus quoted Garnadt as saying.
The magazine said around half of Lufthansa Cargo's freight is transported via passenger planes.
Previously, Garnadt said the night flight ban at Frankfurt, imposed in October, would hurt earnings (http://news.airwise.com/story/view/1332763762.html#) by around EUR€40 million (USD$53 million) a year and sales by over EUR€100 million if it were made permanent.
Lufthansa Cargo made an operating profit of EUR€249 million in 2011, but said it would be unable to replicate this in 2012 due to overcapacity, a weak Chinese market and the night flight ban at its Frankfurt hub.
(Reuters)

[soycowboy]

LH Cargo will go on crying into its milk evermore over
a night ban at Frankfurt. In reality it has had more than
enough time to seek an alternative solution, but decided
instead to try and face down the courts. In the longer
term Leipzig must beckon, which is where the Aerologic
B777F freighter fleet LH Cargo shares with DHL is based
and which would make sense to be the(cheaper) operating
company for future LH freighter acquisitions, which surprise,
surprise will be B777Fs.
Just to add to the mix, rival Air Cargo Germany based at
Hahn is about to be swallowed up by the Russians in the
form of AirBridgeCargo, LH's fiercest rival at Frankfurt...
Happy Days

[Hunter58]

The profitability on belly cargo, if done right, is significatly higher than on the freighters, so why not use the who.e exercise to improve numbers and give the public some real tough story...

[Denti]

A cargo hub removed from a passenger hub does not make sense for lufthansa cargo as the vast majority of the cargo they transport spends at least part of its voyage in the belly of a passenger aircraft.

[PT6A]

Spot on Denti, it really is madness what is going on at FRA... Let's hope it does not spread.

[AlpineSkier]

. Let's hope it does not spread.

That's your hope, but the many citizens and homeowners who are badly affected by the new runway say they will continue to disrupt the airport with mass protests unless restrictions are tightened.

These protest might have more effect than usual because the area affected is rather well-off with lots of lawyers, judges, journalists etc etc.

[main_dog]

Don't you love people who first buy a house near an airport and then... complain about the airplane noise! :ugh:

I could understand in the case of a new airport or perhaps a new runway (although freighters at FRA use the old 07/25/18 runways, not the new 07L/25R). Often the very same people complaining got the house at a cheaper precisely because it was near... an airport.

I would put people like that on a general no-fly list, next holiday they can walk to their destinations... :}

[eagleflyer]

The "mass protests" show about a thousand people in Terminal 1 every Monday. Compare this to the 140.000 passengers passing through FRA every day and the amount of people affected by airplane noise in the Rhein/Main-area (probably millions).

A small, but very loud minority dictates the policy nowadays. Unfortunately most people don´t care, even if their job depends on the airport.

FRAPORT offers to buy houses most affected my the noise. Interestingly, a lot of people sell their homes only to rent them back and stay where they are.

[cedgz]

always the same,

these people buy houses at a cheap price next to a airport and then they complain about the noise. same people did it in other cities, brussels ie...
i'm sure if you give these people 10 million euros they will complain because they get crazy with all this amount of money and spent all like useless monkeys
how can people that bought houses at a cheap price complain and than get the night flights banned, this is unfair against the people that bought houses at a more expensive price at other quiter places(ones night flights are banned they can sell their houses at a way better price they bought it, the cheap buying and complaining people) and unfair against all the airport workers

these people are :mad:

[Hunter58]

They can complain because they vote, and since there is these things called politicians that need the votes...

[Flightmech]

Don't you love people who first buy a house near an airport and then... complain about the airplane noise!

I remember years ago that one of the main members of an airport anti-noise group from a surrounding village at STN was an Air UK captain at the time!:confused:

[AlpineSkier]

Don't you love people who first buy a house near an airport and then... complain about the airplane noise!

I agree entirely with you there but the protesters are ( mainly) from an area which has been there a long time and they are protesting about noise from the new runway. I don't know if this is used by freight or not.

They are also protesting because the former "premier" of Hessen, Roland Koch, made certain commitrments ( forget if no of flights or duration of night-time closure ) which he then ignored .

[RevMan2]

A few differentiated issues here:
1. Roland Koch, erstwhile Premier of Hesse, committed to a total night flight ban in exchange for getting an OK from mediation conference to build the 4th runway, then went back on his word. Not surprising hat folks got pi$$ed off and took legal action.
2. The 4th runway puts traffic over areas that have never experienced significant aircraft noise in the past. Not surprising that they're tad peeved.
3. Lufthansa Cargo has few options, given that 50% of its traffic is flown on a combination of freighter and pax flights. Anyone who says that they should move the freighter fleet to different airport misses the point - express traffic (which is a significant proportion of total traffic and over-proportionately profitable) won't tolerate any delay.
4. Lufthansa Cargo has done SUCH a crap job of selling the need for night ops. Instead of moaning about €40m annual losses and job cuts, they should have been banging on about the impact of a night ops ban on the ability of German manufacturers to compete in the world market/stressing the knock-on effects of the volcanic ash on production lines/ painting a lurid picture of convoys of trucks blasting through the countryside from Hahn to FRA, polluting the atmosphere and creating monster traffic jams etc.
5. The media has done a excellent job for the protesters, publishing foreshortened telephoto images of an A380 appearing to miss the spire of Mainz's cathedral by millimeters and interviewing logistics "experts" who "haven't actually studied the express logistics concept".

[SMT Member]

Verdict is out: The ban is upheld; no flights between 2300 and 0500.

The ban extends to cover the 17 flights that was exempted until now - it's therefore a total ban on all movements during curfew hours. That means if you're not lined up by 2259, you're shyte out of luck and will be denied take-off clearance - even if you're "only" suffering from a delay and are not actually operating a flight scheduled to depart after 2300. Same goes for landings, if you're not on the ground by 2300 you'll be denied clearance and have to divert to your alternate.

Dark days for LH Cargo, as the verdict effectively eradicates their business case, which is built around the profitability of express freight. If your homebase is in Europe, It is simply not possible to offer an intercontinental express product without operating at night. No night flights = no viable express product = no viable LH Cargo in its present form.

[PT6A]

A very sad day... I do hope this is not the end of LH cargo

[AlpineSkier]

Umstrittenes Urteil: Flughafen Frankfurt lobt Nachtflugverbot - SPIEGEL ONLINE - Nachrichten - Wirtschaft (http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/0,1518,825743,00.html)

Fraport calls this a good judgement as they feared it could be more restrictive and affect passenger flights too.

LH calls it a severe blow to Germany's economy.