SINGAPORE, 20 March 2024: One year after Lufthansa Group launched Green Fares, more than 1 million passengers opted for the sustainable-friendly fare.
In the first year, an average of 3% of passengers used the offer, making an important contribution to more sustainable travel. In business class, Green Fares tickets are already selected for 11% of bookings via the Lufthansa Group portals.
Green Fares are popular on routes such as Hamburg-Munich, Zurich-London and Frankfurt-Berlin. Demand continues to rise steadily in all booking classes, underlining the success of the more sustainable fare. In total, travellers 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.
The Green Fares are available with Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, SWISS, Edelweiss, Discover Airlines and Air Dolomiti on more than 730,000 flights annually within Europe and to Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. The Lufthansa Group has also tested Green Fares on selected long-haul routes since November 2023.
How the Green Fares work
The Green Fares fare in Europe and to North Africa has added selection option to the Lufthansa Group’s fare structure, which has been in place since 2015. This product for more sustainable flying includes the full offsetting of individual, flight-related CO2 emissions by Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) and contributing to high-quality climate protection projects. With SAF, a reduction of 20% of CO2 emissions is achieved, while climate protection projects compensate for the remaining 80%. The Lufthansa Group ensures that the amount of SAF required for offsetting is fed into the airport infrastructure within six months of purchase. As a drop-in fuel, SAF is mixed with fossil fuel before being transported to the airport. For operational reasons, it is not possible to refuel individual selected flights.
The Lufthansa Group’s CO2 compensation portfolio currently comprises 15 projects, including two technology-based projects: Carbon Cure’s Sustainable Concrete (carbon capture and long-term storage in concrete) and Biochar (CO2 removal with biochar). In this way, the Lufthansa Group aims to promote the development of the CO2 compensation market towards new technologies and offers long-term binding of CO2.
Currently, around 4% of Lufthansa Group passengers use one of the various offers for more sustainable flying. The company offers opportunities along the entire travel chain. In addition to choosing a special fare such as 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. In addition to private customers, more and more corporate customers are also using one of the Lufthansa Group’s offers for more sustainable flying: in 2023, more than 1,500 companies worldwide invested in SAF with the Lufthansa Group.
By 2030, the Lufthansa Group wants to halve its net CO₂ emissions compared to 2019 through reduction and compensation measures. The independent Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) validated the 2030 target’s reduction share in August 2022.
