Lufthansa Group is pushing a new fare for those who are interested – Green fares.
Yes – there’s a new fare class to look at when booking.
Its part of the group’s move to expand its CO2-neutral flight offers to enable sustainable travel.
The core members of the group – Lufthansa, SWISS, Austrian Airlines and Brussels Airlines are offering a new fare that already includes full CO2 compensation in the price.
According to the group’s press release, 80 per cent of the offsetting is done through high-quality climate protection projects and 20 per cent through the use of sustainable aviation fuels (SAF).
Initially, the new Green Fare will be offered to all guests booking their flights from Denmark, Sweden and Norway (this offering will not work the other way).
The Green Fare is now displayed alongside the familiar fares (Light, Classic, Flex) as an additional fare option in the online booking screen directly after the flight selection. The new offer is available in both Economy Class and Business Class for flights within Europe. The new fare also includes the option of free rebooking, as well as extra status and award miles.
typically the fare will offer a 20% uplift in status and frequent flyer credits.
I’ve assembled a few examples here, based on a Stockholm (city) departure to the carrier’s hub.
Shown on a Lufthansa Business Class Fare
Shown on a Lufthansa Economy fare
Shown on a Brussels Airlines Business Class ticket
And on Brussels Airlines
Shown on a SWISS Economy fare
This will be extended to travel agency partners in Scandinavia.
In Quotes
Christina Foerster, Member of the Lufthansa Group’s Executive Board, responsible for Brand and Sustainability.
“We want to make CO2-neutral flying a matter of course in the future. To this end, we already offer our guests the most comprehensive range of services and are consistently expanding this further. As of now, we are offering a dedicated ‘green fare’ for the first time, which already includes the complete offsetting of the flight’s CO2 emissions through sustainable aviation fuel and certified climate protection projects, already embedded in the price. People don’t just want to fly and discover the world – they also want to protect it. We are driven by the need to support our customers with the right offers,”
Uptake will be interesting
From a frequent flyer perspective, 20% extra miles (both status and award) is not to be sniffed at – depending on the segment length and how it qualifies for their elite qualification.
But I suspect that will only appeal to a small number of people in the grand scheme of things.
It’ll be interesting to see how the uptake of these fares is. Lufthansa Group offers many ways to offset the CO2 they will generate, including paying at the time of booking, through an online portal, or with your frequent flyer miles.
Again – it’ll be down to how willing consumers are to put their hands in their pockets to offset the carbon.
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I wonder what the uptake is on their other current offset offers?
There’s a lot of skepticism around whether or not the “climate protection projects” accomplish what they say they do, and they might get more interest in those an this new program if the 80% went to research on scaling up SAF production through methods that don’t involve food crops (algae, etc.) instead of projects that aren’t connected to aviation directly.