View taken inside a Lufthansa Airbus A350 airplane on March 19, 2025.
Michaela Stache | Afp | Getty Images
Lufthansa announced plans to cut 4,000 roles on Monday as it aims to increase profitability and lean on AI to drive efficiency.
The airline group said it will eliminate a total of 4,000 FTE (full-time equivalent) roles worldwide by 2030. The company is targeting primarily admin roles, the majority of which will be affected at its home base in Germany, as part of a broader restructuring strategy.
“The Lufthansa Group is reviewing which activities will no longer be necessary in the future, for example due to duplication of work. In particular, the profound changes brought about by digitalization and the increased use of artificial intelligence will lead to greater efficiency in many areas and processes,” the company said in a release issued during its Capital Markets Day in Munich.
Lufthansa joins a number of companies citing AI as part of their restructuring strategy. Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said earlier this year that AI had partially helped to shrink the companies headcount by 40% down from 5,000 employees to almost 3,000. Meanwhile software company Salesforce cut 4,000 customer support roles while using AI to reduce its workforce.
“I’ve reduced it from 9,000 heads to about 5,000, because I need less heads,” Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said at the time.
More recently, tech consultancy Accenture also shared plans to exit staff who can’t be retrained to use AI, CEO Julie Sweet said in a call last week.
“We are investing in upskilling our reinventors, which is our primary strategy,” Sweet said, adding that the company is “exiting on a compression timeline” people for whom reskilling isn’t a “viable path.”
Lufthansa shares were up 0.9% as of 1:50 p.m. (8:50 a.m. ET). The company’s shares have gained 25% since the start of the year.
Lufthansa also reported that it expects adjusted operating margin to reach 8-10% from 2028, an increase from its previous goal of 8%, as well as adjusted free cash flow of more than 2.5 billion euros a year ($2.9 billion).
Th airline’s new long term targets should be viewed “positively” as it is better than the market expected, UBS analysts said in Monday note.
Lufthansa profitability targets in 2024, amid a difficult year of staff strikes, increased global price competition and aircraft delays. Annual earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) dropped 39% to 1.65 billion euros ($1.8 billion) last year and it’s annual operating margin was 4.4%, below Lufthansa’s strategic target of 8%. The stock ended the year down 23%.