And the duration of “now” may be rather uncertain. That’s what you should take away from this UPoR story that attempts to put a big happy face on the future of Lufthansa’s Charlotte-Munich flight. The story comes after Lufthansa CEO Christoph Franz said earlier in the month that Charlotte was “a smaller destination … that is heavily depending on the first-class feeder network from US Airways.”
Pressing Lufthansa on the subject, the Charlotte Observer came up with this:
Lufthansa spokesman Nils Haupt said that’s not the case. “We are committed to the Charlotte market,” Haupt said. “US Airways is helping us, admittedly, at the moment with the feed.”
The US Airways-American merger is on track to close as soon as early December.
But Haupt said “We’re pretty sure we can manage” to make the Charlotte flights work without US Airways feeding Lufthansa passengers. “There are no plans, on a short-term basis” to change the flight to Munich.
Short-term basis? Pretty sure we can manage? That’s really not very reassuring. Airlines will, of course, publicly state their commitment to a market until the moment come that they drop a market. That’s just common sense. And it’s also just common sense that the future of Lufthansa’s CLT-Munich flight is uncertain in the medium term despite those public reassurances, as what is now US Airways goes from being an ally of Lufthansa to an adversary.
