Germany’s Lufthansa Group has marked the first anniversary of its ‘Green Fares’ sustainability initiative by announcing how the program has performed in its first 12 months of operation.
One year after the launch of the scheme, more than one million passengers have already opted for the special fares, and an average of 3% of passengers have used the offer, which according to the group “makes an important contribution to more sustainable travel”.
The Green Fares are offered on certain routes within Europe and North Africa. The fares include an element that goes towards the full offsetting of individual, flight-related carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions by sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) as well as a contribution to high-quality climate protection projects.
The group states that “with SAF, a reduction of 20% of CO₂ emissions is achieved, while the remaining 80% is compensated by climate protection projects.” The Lufthansa Group ensures that the amount of SAF required for offsetting is fed into the airport infrastructure within six months of purchase.
The Green Fares are available with Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, SWISS, Edelweiss, Discover Airlines, and Air Dolomiti on more than 730,000 flights per year within Europe and to Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. The Lufthansa Group has also been testing Green Fares on selected long-haul routes since November 2023.
In terms of the breakdown of the Green Fares that have sold in the last year, in business class, Green Fares tickets are already selected for 11% of all bookings via the Lufthansa Group booking portals. According to a group statement, Green Fares have been particularly popular on routes such as Hamburg to Munich, Zurich to London, and Frankfurt to Berlin.
The group states that demand is continuing to rise steadily in all booking classes overall and that passengers “have offset more than 77,000 tonnes of CO₂ since the launch of Green Fares by offsetting their flight-related CO₂ emissions. This amount corresponds to the CO₂ emissions of more than 12,000 flights from Hamburg to Munich with an Airbus A320neo”.
Currently, around 4% of Lufthansa Group passengers use one of the 15 projects that offer passengers the opportunity for more sustainable flying. In addition to choosing the Green Fares, passengers can also select individually tailored offers with a higher proportion of SAF, for example, during the booking process. It is also possible to offset flight-related CO₂ emissions during or after the flight.
The Lufthansa Group has set itself ambitious climate protection goals and aims to achieve a neutral CO₂ balance by 2050. Already by 2030, the Lufthansa Group wants to halve its net CO₂ emissions compared to 2019 through reduction and compensation measures.
For effective climate protection, the Lufthansa Group is focusing in particular on accelerated fleet modernization, the continuous optimization of flight operations, the use of SAF, and offers for its private travelers and corporate customers to make air travel or the transport of freight more sustainable.
