Lufthansa goes Jazz...

[Guest Airmail]

Lufthansa To Rebrand Five Regional Carriers

Thursday October 16, 8:47 am ET

FRANKFURT -(Dow Jones)- Deutsche Lufthansa AG said Thursday it is rebranding fiveseparate regional airlines under the name Lufthansa Regional.

The five airlines will see combined savings of EUR100M annually, Chief Executive Wolfgang Mayrhuber said at a press conference in Frankfurt.Usage of their 151 planes is expected to increase 10% thanks to making routes more seamless and reducing ground time, he said.

That benefits Lufthansa itself because it could then conceivably expand its route offerings, company spokesman Klaus Walther said later.

Airplanes at Air Dolomiti, Augsburg Airways, Contact Air, Eurowings and Lufthansa CityLine will be repainted with a blue and white Lufthansa regional logo. Other regional Lufthansa partners Cirrus and Cimber Air decided not to join the group, but will still fly feeder routes for Lufthansa, Walther said.

Lufthansa, which owns all of Air Dolomiti and CityLine and 25% of Eurowings and has partnerships with the rest, isn't planning to increase its stake in any of them, Mayrhuber said.

The airlines will remain independent but will use the new combined Lufthansa brand to optimize cooperation, Mayrhuber said.

Regional passengers who feed into Lufthansa's main network could fill the capacity of 19 jumbo jets a day, Mayrhuber said. Nearly half of the five airlines' passengers transfer to Lufthansa flights, he said.

Lufthansa said the reorganization of its regional carriers should help avoid unnecessary costs.

Mayrhuber said the absence of charter carrier Aero Lloyd, which was grounded Thursday due to bankruptcy, "won't be felt in the market," with other carriers absorbing the capacity.

According to Aero Lloyd's Web site, it carried 3.5 million passengers last year.

But, Mayrhuber said the bankruptcy shows that the airline industry isn't out of its slump.

"Even though Lufthansa posted a second-quarter operating profit, it doesn't mean we're out of the crisis," he said.

Later, however, when asked how the third quarter had gone, he grinned. While he couldn't comment until the earnings release Nov. 12, he said, "You can see I'm not crying."

[Guest CJRT]

I hope the leadership at the Lufthansa regionals provides better leadership than JR did during the merger at Jazz. He was all but visible to the employee base. He allowed his minions ie GW and ST to create policies and to write memos that continuosly sucked the life out their number one asset !! When questioned on their misteps and lack of performance JR et al would fall back on the "911" excuse and "a merger of this size was never done before" excuse. This despite the fact that JR had a practice run with the Alliance merger. Same mistakes made over again. I hope that Lufthansa doesn't bring the Jazz team over to consult because if they do they will make the same mistakes once again.

Rant over !!

[Guest FRO]

That's no rant, sounds like fact to me. The new plan is to relocate everything to YYZ, close down or downsize the shops at YVR, s$%tcan 60 guys from YHZ, another 20 from YVR. They are going to try and ship wheels and brakes to YVR from the east. They tried that the last time, we had a Dash-8 up on jacks with wheels and brakes robbed so we could keep the rest of the fleet flying. Were doomed.

[Guest Aer Nfld]

Amen brother.

As someone else mentioned here earlier the Executive at Jazz has been neutered, and I would imagine the bungle they have made of this once profitiabel business, at least at the former GX and QK operations is nothing short of a crime.

1. Morale is the lowest it has ever been.

2. The philsophy seems to be shrink to profitability.

3. The Executive are non-existent.

4. The communication has not improved despite a couple of surveys, focus groups etc how many times does this have to coem out before someone of something gets done!

5. The following functions at Jazz are a mess and have been since integration, Human Resources, payroll, IT, Finance. There does not appear to be any handle on who this company has, what their skills are,what department they fall into and where we are spending our money.

6. Excuses. This compamy spends more time looking for reasons. It has been Air Canada to blame, ot 911 or the trains or the Gov't, never Jazz Exec or the lack of leadership and foresight requuired to get through these tough times.

Employees need to unite and foght for change, I know that is motherhood, but I tell you it is extremely difficult to sit by and watch friends and hard working employees go home when it could be avoided. On the one hand it is all about cost, on the other hand you have management commuting to work from other bases on Positive passes and staying in hotels on per diems, I am sorry but if the job in in a certain base you have to move or you are on the hook yourself for the commute just like we do with every other employee in the company. The sad thing is that this mentioned above is not an isolated case. Just look at AC in YHZ, there is no base here yet they are leasing space for a few employees who did wnat to movce to YUL. So instead they go back and forth a couple of times a week stay in hotels and for the other days occupy a leased space in Burnside, not the actions of a company loosing millions!

I could go on and on. I just can't stomach it anymore, AC neeeds to be taken to tadsk on theri decisions with respect to Jazz and our Executive are not effective enough to do that, otherwise we woudl still be flying YOW-YFC, a route they abandoned in teh winetr sked, whcih sources have told me was one of Jazz' most profitable routes.

It is time for a revolt!