Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Lufthansa Group first quarter 2022 results conference call. Throughout today's recorded presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you may press star followed by one on your touchtone telephone. Please press the star key followed by zero for operator assistance. I would now like to turn the conference over to Dennis Weber. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our quarterly results presentation. As usual, with me on the call today are our CEO, Carsten Spohr, and our CFO, Remco Steenbergen. Carsten will give you a quick overview of the most recent trends, in particular our intake of bookings over the past couple of weeks, before then Remco dives deeper into our quarterly financial results, the development. Afterwards, you'll have the opportunity to ask your questions as usual. Please make sure to limit your questions to three. Thank you very much and Carsten, over to you.
Yeah. Thank you, Dennis, and ladies and gentlemen, welcome from Frankfurt, also from my side. Let me, in a way, summarize the current situation in just one sentence. People are traveling again. Exchange of ideas, in-person interaction, meeting relatives, friends, business partners, all of this is finally possible again now that the worldwide pandemic is indeed subsiding. More than ever, there's a global acknowledgement of the significance of travel and transport between partnering countries, whether near or far, and our mission to indeed connect people, cultures, and economies in a sustainable way is perhaps more relevant than ever. After all, aviation does make a significant contribution to international understanding and thus also to peace. Every day, we now see firsthand how much people have missed personal contacts, discovery, and traveling. We see it at airports, on our airplanes, and especially we see it through our ticket sales.
The coronavirus, ladies and gentlemen, has demanded a lot from us, as you're all aware. The pandemic challenged us, and we had to deal with the worst financial crisis in our history. I think it is now time to put this crisis behind us, at least mentally. We are in a new normal, and we're now looking ahead with confidence. In summary, I like to say that we now are at the point where crisis management was yesterday, and now it's about shaping the future again. The decisive factor why we can leave the coronavirus crisis behind us is the mentioned desire to travel by our customers. After two long years of travel restrictions, the need to catch up is great. It applies to business customers, but especially to leisure customers.
We expect strong growth for our airlines in the upcoming summer months, with probably more tourists on board our airplanes than ever before in our 100 years of history. Structurally, we're well-positioned to meet the growing demand in the private travel sector. We have, as you probably know, consistently expanded our offering in this area even before the crisis, and we are now benefiting from this strategic decision. More than ever, our successful multi-brand and multi-hub strategy is paying off. It gives our customers the greatest possible flexibility and choice. To further improve the travel experience of our guests on board, we are indeed investing into the onboard experience. Over the next 18 months, for example, we will be monitoring the introduction of new seats in all travel classes. I can already assure you, we will set industry standards here.
The number of destinations we serve is back already to 2019 levels, and our network is fully restored. We fly to over 300 cities worldwide via our hubs this summer, the same as in 2019. In the U.S, we offer even more destinations than before the pandemic, and for more leisure-oriented travelers, the choice is greater than ever before with more than 120 vacation destinations in our network. Lufthansa Cargo remains a success story. Worldwide, supply chains continue to be interrupted. Ocean freight continues to be basically suffering from serious problems in the system. At Chinese airports or seaports, for example, the problems are currently increasing, not decreasing, up to 350 ships in front of Shanghai Harbor. As a result, demand for air freight capacity remains very high.
Lufthansa Cargo achieved an Adjusted EBIT of almost half a billion euros in just one, of course, the first quarter. Another new record set. Despite all the joy over our fully booked airplanes and people's desire to travel, the upcoming summer will undoubtedly be a major operational challenge for the whole industry. We, of course, think and plan ahead as good as we can. We will add to our resources where necessary. We are maximally flexible and can adapt to changes immediately, and we have improved our operational processes even further wherever feasible. But we're also fully aware that many partners, such as airports, air traffic control, caterers, are currently struggling with significant staff shortages. Some problems will surely not be solved by this summer, and together with our partners, we are obviously looking for solutions.
I'm sure we're not going to find all the solutions we need by the summer. It's obvious, and this is also my appeal to them, that all stakeholders must once again significantly step up their efforts when it comes to those operational deficiencies, because now after the pandemic, satisfaction of our guests has to be back at our number one priority. Because as mentioned before, people want to travel, demand is rising sharply. Let me go into a little bit more detail here again. The latest bookings show that the pent-up demand is enormous. Last week, total bookings exceeded 2019 levels for the first time, and actually April 26th was the strongest booking day since the whole crisis began. Customers are also increasingly confident that the pandemic is finally over, which results in, again, longer booking term patterns, sometimes several months in advance.
The current booking level for June and July is over 80% of the pre-crisis level. This figure is all the more remarkable given that it was significantly lower just three months ago, and it's remarkable because we still have much less capacity on offer this summer than we did in the year 2019. Transatlantic traffic remains particularly strong from both sides of the Atlantic. Contrary to some initial fears, demand in the U.S is very strong, supported of course, by the strength of the U.S dollar when it comes to our balance sheets. Therefore, here in particular, bookings in premium classes are up as customers are giving themselves a treat to fly either in first class, business class or premium economy. Overall, not just in the U.S, demand for premium classes is recovering faster than demand for economy.
This is despite the fact that the return of business travel is still lagging behind the recovery of leisure travel. Also trends are changing in this respect. Led by small and medium-sized enterprises, bookings have also recovered in our business travel sales channels. By the end of 2022, we now expect to welcome back around 70% of our business customers on board of our airlines. Due to all the effects mentioned above, we expect average yields in the further course of the year to be significantly above the previous year and above the 2019 pre-COVID levels. Remco will go into this in more detail in just a moment. Before Remco, though, explains the set of our first quarter results in detail, let me briefly mention the special nature of those first three months this year.
The beginning of the year was still strongly influenced by the developments of the pandemic. Rapidly rising numbers of infections triggered by the highly contagious Omicron variant obviously caused restrictions also in travel, and therefore customers were reluctant not just to fly, but also to book. In the course of the weeks that followed, though, the picture gradually changed. Restrictions fell, and immediately the number of new bookings went up significantly already in February, but especially then in March. I must say, rarely ever seen a quarter where trends have changed so quickly and so significantly in all the years I'm in this industry. Let me give you some figures to illustrate this. Corporate bookings rose from just around 20% in January to a level of more than 50% now in March, always compared to 2019.
In January, we welcome 3.7 million guests on board. In March, almost six million. The first quarter in total, four times more passengers than the year before. Seat load factor went from 59%-70%, and also the aircraft maintained by Lufthansa Technik around the world completed almost one million flight hours in March, which was significantly less in January. As this moment continues, we are therefore very optimistic about the future. We see this mentioned strong increase in bookings. We believe that we are strategically well prepared for the changes in demand and maybe most important, because the successful transformation of the company, which has made us more flexible, more efficient, and surely more effective today than we were before the pandemic.
As I mentioned also in other quarterly reports, we have done things in Lufthansa we surely couldn't and wouldn't have done without the pandemic. Taking this opportunity of the crisis, I think was key for us besides survival. With that, I hand over to Remco for more detail. Thank you.
Thank you, Carsten, and a warm welcome to all of you, also from my side. As always, I would like to begin by giving you an overview of the group's financial results of the first quarter 2022. As we have said in early March, the environment was everything but favorable for airlines at the beginning of 2022. Omicron was spreading and infection rates were at record high levels in already seasonally low volume time of the year. However, Adjusted EBITDA still came in at close to break-even levels, thanks to structural cost saving actions taken and to business improvements in the later stages of the quarter. Adjusted EBITDA was EUR -28 million in the first quarter. Adjusted EBIT amounted to EUR -591 million, compared to a loss of more than EUR 1 billion in the first quarter of last year.
This result excludes adjustment for one-time non-operational effects related to the war in Ukraine of EUR 110 million mainly at Lufthansa Technik, but also LSG and Lufthansa Systems for operations in Russia following the implementations of sanctions. Adjusted Free Cash Flow was the highlight of the quarter. Recorded an inflow of EUR 780 million, reflecting the continuous improvement in bookings from week to week. Analyzing our performance in the first three months of the year in more detail, the results of the passenger airlines reflects the difficult environment, especially at the beginning of the quarter. Capacity increased significantly during the quarter. In the period as a whole, it amounted to 57% of 2019, only slightly lower than originally forecasted because of the demand-related cancellations, particularly in February. Adjusted EBIT amounted to EUR -1.1 billion.
Despite the difficult quarter, we saw some very encouraging developments in our passenger airline business. Yields in long-haul were up against both 2019 and the prior year. In short-haul, the gap to 2019 was smaller than previous quarters. On the cost side, restructuring made further progress. In line with our forecast, cost reductions were partly offset by the sharp reduction of short-time work subsidies. They were hardly there compared to the prior year. In most parts of the organization, short-term work has come to an end. Nonetheless, unit costs declined compared to prior year, supported by the continuous normalization of traffic. Particularly Eurowings stands out in this regard, with unit costs below pre-crisis levels despite capacity still being down 44% versus 2019.
This highlights the deep restructuring which the business has gone through, including a significant change of the network towards more leisure-focused, medium-haul destinations. Our aviation service companies made a significant contribution to the group's results also in the first quarter of 2022. First and foremost, Lufthansa Cargo continues to exceed all our expectations. Supply chain disruptions and the congestion in sea freight persisted also in the first quarter. The war in Ukraine and the resulting closure of the Russian airspace for Western airlines further reduced cargo capacity on the important Europe to Asia routes. All this led to a further increase in cargo yields. As a result, Lufthansa Cargo reported an adjusted EBIT of EUR 495 million just in the first quarter, again, setting a new record.
At Lufthansa Technik, momentum improved further as airlines worldwide began to prepare for further market recovery in the coming months. Revenues increased 60% as demand picked up, especially in the key engine and component segments. Adjusted EBIT improved to EUR 120 million. Underlying trends also improved in the catering segment around LSG, primarily driven by the industry recovery in North America. Adjusted EBIT was EUR -40 million as the Asia-Pacific business continues and continued to be very difficult. Nonetheless, adjusted EBIT was above the prior year when adjusting for EUR 53 million of grants related to the US CARES Act recognized in the first quarter of last year. Finally, the more negative results in other businesses and group functions was mainly related to a sharp reduction to almost nil in the short-term, of the short-term work subsidies as a consequence of the ramp up.
Let me turn to our cash flow performance, where the recovery of our business was most obvious in Q1. Over the course of the quarter, we generated new bookings in an amount of over EUR two billion. As the momentum was very strong, especially towards the end of the quarter, just around EUR 1.1 billion had become cash effective. The difference is primarily due to payments made by credit card and to agencies, which we collect with a small time lag. These payments are part of our receivables at the end of the quarter. Net capital expenditures were EUR 630 million, and the IFRS 16 operating lease charge amounted to EUR 86 million. In sum, this resulted in a positive adjusted free cash flow of EUR 780 million in the first quarter.
Due to the positive free cash flow, the group's available liquidity increased further in Q1. At EUR 9.9 billion, it was about EUR 400 million higher compared to the end of 2021, even though we repaid COVID-related stabilization measures in amount of EUR 352 million in Switzerland and the U.S. In April, we concluded the revolving credit facility of EUR two billion with a syndicate of banks replacing EUR 700 million of existing bilateral credit lines. Therefore, in the Q2 , we intend to repay the remaining CHF 210 million Swiss francs currently drawn and to cancel the remaining facility of around CHF 1.3 billion Swiss francs, thereby terminating the state support measures in Switzerland ahead of schedule, similar to what we did in Germany last year.
Pro forma of the net effect from the RCF and the termination of the Swiss government support, the available group liquidity would amount to EUR 9.7 billion at the end of March, significantly above our long-term target liquidity of EUR 6 billion-EUR 8 billion. In line with the positive development of our liquidity position, our other balance sheet figures also continued to improve during the quarter. I've always said that restoring the strength of our balance sheet is key, and I'm proud of the progress we made the past three months as well. Net debt declined to EUR 8.3 billion due to the positive free cash flow. In addition, we are a beneficiary of the current change in monetary policies.
Mainly due to the positive valuation effect resulting from a 50 basis points increase in the IFRS discount rate. The net pension liability declined by EUR 1.3 billion to EUR 5.3 billion. The decline would have been even larger if plan assets had not performed negatively, reflecting the losses in the global bond and equity markets. At EUR 451 million, we even record a surplus in the Swiss pension plan now. Reduction of pension provisions and positive valuation changes meant shareholder equity increased almost EUR one billion to EUR 5.4 billion despite the net loss in the quarter. This equates to an equity ratio of more than 12%. Since we spoke in March, we have also made further progress in the implementation of our cost saving program. Around EUR 2.9 billion of cost saving measures have already been implemented, equaling around 80% of the target reduction of EUR 3.5 billion.
On the personnel cost side, the renegotiation of labor agreements for the cockpit and cabin crews at Lufthansa Mainline is the single most important topic. We'll continue the intensive dialogue, especially with the Vereinigung Cockpit, in order to conclude follow-up agreement before the current scope clause and wage agreements expire at the end of June. In Switzerland, we just proved that this is possible. Swiss and the local cockpit union have agreed on the basic parameters of a new collective labor agreement. The agreement increases the flexibility and speed with which Swiss can respond to market changes. Union members will vote on the new CLA in June, so we expect the new CLA to enter into force on the first of July. In addition, we will drive the growth of higher productivity and lower-cost platforms such as Eurowings Discover and otherwise.
Especially on leisure-heavy routes where yields are structured lower, a highly efficient cost base is absolutely necessary. Eurowings Discover, for example, will serve more than 50 destinations in the upcoming summer season. As announced in March, we also initiated the creation of a new short-haul flight operation to improve the profitability of our network and our feeder traffic. We expect flight operations of this so-called CityLine 2 to start in spring next year. On the non-personnel cost side, we are even a step further. Here, only a gap of around EUR 200 million remains to be closed. We plan to achieve this by lowering external spend as well as further optimization programs at Eurowings and at CityLine. Achieving our cost reduction target is all the more important as we face headwinds in cost areas outside our control. The most important of them is fuel.
Our hedging portfolio continues to largely protect us from the sharp increases in the oil price since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. 63% of our exposure to crude oil in the remainder of 2022 is hedged at an average rate of $74 per barrel. Also for the year 2023, we've already hedged nearly 30% at an average break-even price of $82 per barrel. However, the war in Ukraine has not only driven up the price of crude oil. It had also led to physical and financial disruptions in the oil products market, especially the market for jet fuel has come under pressure.
Exacerbated by the recovery of demand, this has led to a sharp increase in the price differential between jet fuel and crude oil, the so-called jet crack, which has increased from just around $20 at the beginning of March to a level of above $50 recently. This is multiple times higher compared to historical levels. Given the only minimal volatility in jet crack historically, and then I talk about the last decades, and the liquidity of the jet crack hedging market, we continue to focus our hedging on crude oil. While we started to close some jet crack hedges for the summer period, we'll still be faced with a significant fuel cost burden. Current forward prices indicate an average jet crack of around $38 for the remainder of the year.
One thing is clear, the current increases in fuel prices impact our industry and is far too high to be offset by additional cost reductions. Therefore, ticket prices will have to rise. As Carsten Spohr highlighted, customers have a great desire to start flying again after two years of pandemic. Based on current bookings and adjusted we made to our pricing, we expect yields to increase by at least a high single-digit % rate compared to 2021 in the remaining of the year, with the next few months looking particularly strong. As a result, yields will be higher this year compared to the pre-crisis levels of 2019. As demand grows, we're also expanding our flight schedules. In the second quarter, we plan to ramp up to an average capacity of around 75% compared to 2019.
In peak summer, that means in the third quarter, we expect capacity to reach at least 85% of 2019 levels. On short and medium-haul routes, capacity utilization will even be higher. In this segment, we expect to return to around 95% of pre-crisis levels in the summer. Eurowings will offer even more capacity compared to summer 2019. While total long-haul capacity remains lower due to the continued restrictions in Asia, capacity on the transatlantic is expected to reach around 85% in summer. This increases to slightly more than 90% when including the offer of our joint venture partner, United, with whom we share revenues and jointly manage capacity, distribution, and pricing.
For the full year of 2022, we have increased our outlook and now expect an average capacity of around 75% compared to 2019, instead of more than 70% before. Again, assuming a continued recovery also by the summer. Before discussing our overall financial outlook, let me spend a bit of time on Lufthansa Cargo, which we expect to make a significant contribution to group profits also in 2022. At this stage, an end to the current air freight boom is not yet in sight. Global supply chains continue to be out of sync with the current lockdowns in China imposing additional supply chain risk. Disruptions in sea freight are worse rather than better. Air freight capacity will remain limited despite the return of some belly capacity in the further course of the year.
New freight aircraft are not easily to come by, and the operation of some old freighters will become uneconomical once rates begin to more normalize and fuel costs remain high. Against this background, we expect Lufthansa Cargo's exceptional performance to continue for some time to come. While we expect yields to start trending down from the current extremely high levels in the second half year, we expect profits to at least come close to the record levels of 2021 also for the full year 2022. This brings me to our financial outlook. Based on our current bookings, the capacity ramp up, and further progress in implementing our cost reduction program, we expect financial performance to improve in the further course of the year. We still aim for a positive adjusted EBIT in the second quarter.
However, the volatility of fuel cost makes precise financial forecasting impossible, even when it comes to next quarter. We confirm our outlook of an improvement in adjusted EBIT compared to the prior level in the full year of 2022. We also expect that CapEx to amount to approximately EUR 2.5 billion. Ladies and gentlemen, we live in uncertain times, so it's even more important that Lufthansa is as attractive, as flexible, and as resilient as ever before. In this regard, I'm firmly convinced that we are on the right track. We've strengthened our balance sheet, we have built high levels of liquidity, we have significantly reduced our costs, and we have adjusted our business model to take maximum advantage of the current high customer demand, which is returning strongly. As Carsten said at the beginning, we are leaving the corona crisis behind us.
After a difficult past two years, business is coming back, and we're working hard to make this recovery also come through in our profits and our cash flow. That is why we confirm our target of achieving an adjusted EBIT of at least 8% by 2024, also today. Carsten Spohr and I will be happy now to answer your questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. If you are using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selections. Anyone who has a question may press star followed by one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. The first question is from the line of Muneeba Kayani from Bank of America, p lease go ahead.
Good morning, Carsten and Remco. Thanks for the presentation. Some strong yields that you're seeing in your bookings, and the guidance, so thank you for that. Can you help us think about loads for this summer and for the full year and hence RASK outlook for the year? Do you think that, like, unit revenues would be above 2019 levels? We heard quite bullish commentary from the U.S airlines of over mid-teens improvement in RASK. If you could help us understand what you're expecting for this year, that'd be very helpful. That's my first question. Secondly, if you could just update on the asset sale process, where you are right now and how we should be thinking about timing on that, please. Thank you.
Yeah, maybe I start with the asset sale process, because I'm afraid there's not much more to say than what you already know. We are, as you well know, focused on LSG rest of the world. We're looking at AirPlus. We're looking at the minority disposal potentially in Lufthansa Technik. Nothing to add to what's already been communicated. I'll hand over to Remco for the first question in terms of loads.
Yeah, I think it's a clear question, and we actually see the same what you also commented from the U.S end, right? We see the seat load factors in the summer to come very, very close to 2019 level. As we currently see, it's only one or two percent below 2019. It's indeed coming back significantly.
That, of course, in combination with the yield increasing, is resulting in an even higher RASK improvement than we have guided on the yield. In that sense, we are as positive as the U.S carrier as well.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Jaime Rowbotham from Deutsche Bank, p lease go ahead.
Morning, Carsten, Remco, and Dennis. Three questions, please. On slide five where you consider bookings, you talk about the transatlantic being particularly strong. What differences are you seeing in the nature of those bookings versus pre-crisis? Is it spread across the usual destinations? And are there any changes in competitive dynamics, perhaps for Swiss out of Zurich more than for Lufthansa out of Frankfurt? Second question, are you worrying at all about rising inflation, whether it's transitory or more sustained, both in terms of impacts on your cost base ex-fuel and the impact it could have on consumer spending? And thirdly, you've gained a new material shareholder since you last briefed us in early March in the form of Klaus-Michael Kühne with 10%.
Carsten, I wondered if you could give us a bit of color in terms of Lufthansa's relationship both with Mr. Kühne and with Kuehne + Nagel, for which we know you operate air cargo services. Thanks.
I'd start with one and number three, and then we will add obviously number two. As a transatlantic, compared to the pre-COVID times, I think what are we seeing? We're seeing a very strong dollar. We're seeing very strong ability to pay by U.S travelers. A number maybe which even I wasn't fully aware of, if you buy a business class ticket from San Francisco to Frankfurt round trip, you're paying up to $16,500 for that business class. First class, we're talking $23,000, and those classes are full. Of course, there's other fares in the market, but this thing is a little bit different than what we've seen before COVID.
Backbone is still hub to hub as it is in our business model with United, but we have added quite a few more leisure-oriented destinations on both sides. On the U.S side by flying there nonstop through Eurowings Discover, and we see a lot more U.S travelers through our hubs going towards leisure-oriented destinations in Italy, in Greece, and so on. As I mentioned in my openings, quite a few leisure travel-oriented passengers on board in premium classes as well. That may be in terms of what's a little different than what we've seen before. Corporate, as we said before, we now see the booking levels of 50%, and I think that'll be coming very strongly back to in the third quarter as well. We have more destinations in the U.S We have now 30 destinations across the North Atlantic, including Canada.
Again, I think this will be a backbone of our success this year. Kühne + Nagel, and Mr. Kühne indeed has been a very a faithful customer with his Kühne + Nagel forwarder business for cargo since many years, all the way back to before my times in cargo, but also when I worked at cargo, I had the pleasure to work with him. You see a trend in forwarding that they are expanding towards air travel. Some have bought airlines, some have bought aircraft, some are working closer with airlines. I think it's not just the individual here, but we see a trend in global forwarding to put an eye on air travel. A similar development you see in Italy with the Aponte family in MSC, who's looking, as you well know, together with us at ITA.
I think this goes beyond an individual interest into an airline. I think that business relationship we have seen so successfully for many decades on the cargo side will now very much looking forward to extend to the shareholder aspect. Remco?
Yeah, Jaime, the second question on the inflation. Let me first say I'm very happy with the progress we made on the cost reductions, which are under our control. The progress we have on the EUR 3.5 billion, and we want to complete that. If you look at this year on the cost increases of fuel, I've already commented on that. For the cost excluding fuel, we don't see yet significant inflation impact. For the coming years, that might be applicable, we have to see. If that's the case, it will be applicable across our society. We see that everywhere where prices are increasing, it will be applicable for our industry. The same as we're currently doing with kerosene cost increases, we will pass that on to our customers.
In that sense, I have to say I'm very proud that our sales force as well, they have been on top of the pricing and the whole yield management. We see that clearly in Q1. The guidance I've given you also for Q2 and the rest of the year on this yield improvements. We will be on top of that and make sure that the costs which are impacting our aviation industry are passed on, and therefore we can generate as soon as possible a positive profit and a positive free cash flow and create value accordingly. Am I worried? No. But of course, it requires a lot of work on our end to make sure that this is passed on in the right way.
I think it's worth to add, as you probably all know, though, we have been more disciplined when it came to capacity management and pricing during the crisis. If you see where we are now compared to some of our competitors, we are still more disciplined on not throwing capacity into the market, but rather keeping an eye on pricing and yield. I think we will continue to do that through the course of this year, adding less aircraft to the fleet than some others, and we have taken more out than others. I think that capacity discipline will also pay off in times of inflation.
Excellent. Thanks, guys.
The next question is from the line of James Sheridan from BNP Paribas, p lease go ahead.
Oh yeah, morning. A few for me, please. The first one is on really on your capacity and sort of strategic planning. You say you've been quite disciplined on capacity. I was just wondering if you could give me your thoughts on how much of that discipline, if you will, is being impacted by aircraft delays, as well as these issues you talked about, sort of staffing issues at airports, et cetera. Ultimately, would you have gone much higher than 75% on capacity this year if you hadn't had either of those things? Secondly, I was chatting to someone the other day, and we were talking about your MRO business, Technik. For many, many years, Carsten, you said, "Look, we don't want to sell it. It's good. It's good to have," et cetera.
I get why it was talked about during COVID as kind of the liquidity event. Now, I think, I hope that type of thing is behind us. Are you still 100% committed to spinning that off, even if just as a minority? The third one, coming back to Jaime's question on Kühne. I was wondering if, just again, your thoughts, at what point does the regulator get a little bit concerned about, you know, how much influence Kühne might have, given you have these business relations on the freight side? Thank you.
Yeah, James. I'll go in the order of your question. We still have extra aircraft, extra pilots, extra flight attendants, so we have not pushed ourselves to our operational limits when it comes to capacity, but we rather did that by our assumptions about demand, and again, coming back to Remco's point, trying to have a healthy yield management in place. So as you well know, there's 14 three-eighties alone sitting in Spain we could have brought back to the air. It's not an issue of delayed aircraft or operational bottlenecks, neither in Lufthansa nor what we will be seeing in the airports, which has demand, it could define our capacity planning.
The shortcomings in the airports, which are surely there, you know that we have to cancel 100 flights one weekend compared to some other airports, if I may say so, in Europe, that's very small an issue here in Frankfurt, and also that would not define our capacity planning as we talk specific hours of the day on specific days of the week. Point two, the Technik, thanks for that question because let me reiterate, we never said we need to sell this for liquidity issues. We actually, I think, said that every single quarter we report, we don't do fire sales.
There's a strategic reasoning here that we do believe that bringing somebody else on board of Technik who brings, you know, additional investment opportunities, which we as a mother company are focusing rather on aircraft than on investments in Technik or one way or another we come to our limits to make sure we maintain the cash flow we promised to you in our midterm targets. There is obviously limits to what we can do. We think bringing somebody else on board will help us to make Technik a more successful business than it already is. That's why we are, as you well know, preparing for a transaction maybe in 2023 and no acceleration there. Neither are we worried in terms of liquidity, very much in need.
We found other ways, as you know, and this is not part of our liquidity management or planning, but rather of our strategic positioning of the group and its various parts for the long-term future. Mr. Kühne, I don't have the exact number of his share in our cargo business, but also our cargo business is well spread out. From my days, I would recall it to be maybe 10%. I'm sure it's not much more now. I think there the impact is limited and at which percentage point regulators would get nervous, I cannot tell you. You're probably right, there would be a certain limit of what regulators would allow to be done. Mr. Kühne said in an interview in the biggest German newspaper that he would not go above 25% because of also this issue.
That's probably the only public information available on this topic I have at this point.
Okay, thanks a lot. Just if I can come back on the German stake, 14%. I mean, I think you've gone on record as saying you'd like that gone sooner rather than later. Maybe just your latest thoughts. Thanks.
Well, the 14% German stake still owned, as you well know, have to be disposed by October next year. That's in the contract and in the EU restrictions. Obviously we have no insight into that sales process. There are Chinese walls with our contacts with the government and those people in the government who are responsible for the disposal of these stakes. No public information available, but also an interview by our new finance minister who said that he has started the disposal of the Lufthansa shares because we were at 20%, as you know, and we're now down to 6%, and we should not forget that the German taxpayer probably is looking at a EUR one billion profit, selling at current share prices.
Looking at what Germany is spending right now, I would not expect this to last too much longer to finally give the shareholder the EUR one billion we made for him.
Okay, very clear. Thanks for the update. Appreciating it.
The next question is from the line of Stephen Furlong from Davy. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning, Carsten, Remco and Dennis. Yeah, normally when input costs or oil prices go up, there's a lag for the airlines to try and pass that through to higher ticket prices. I think it's coming much sooner now, and presumably it's because of pent-up demand. Is it also other change in mix or the fact that there's later bookings that's helping you to pass through the fuel costs? Maybe you could just comment on that. Then also in terms of higher ticket prices, where you see Europe, whether it's the network airline or Eurowings into the summer, presumably particularly Eurowings, it's very weighted to calendar Q3 and the summer tourist season. Thank you.
Yeah, Stephen, indeed, you mentioned the main argument. Compared to normal booking patterns, we see much shorter lead times between booking and actually boarding your airplane. That of course, in times of increasing oil prices, helps to pass on those spikes to the customers. There's also a more long-term element, which was the reason why we reduced our hedging limit levels. It is that both cargo and our point-to-point business in Eurowings obviously allow us to pass on our fuel changes. Basically works both ways, also when the fuel price comes down, to our customers more than our more long-term booking oriented core-network business. That's why we remember two years ago before COVID, we reduced our hedging levels.
Now again, on top of this more strategic long-term development, we see, as you rightly put in your question, that COVID-driven short-term booking schemes we have been suffering from. In this regard, of course, it helps. On top of that, you know, we are hedged a little higher than most others. As Remco pointed out, this is a significant issue for us, but maybe a little less than some of our competitors. In Eurowings, this summer indeed we'll see more than 100% of the capacity we have seen in 2019. You probably saw from, or you heard from Remco that the cost restructure in Eurowings is by far the most successful of all players in the group. Shutting down Germanwings helped a lot. We brought the overhead cost down by one-third.
Again, people are willing to spend more money on summer vacation or on vacation other than the summer. I think we see that positive element as well on Eurowings. Yeah, we have, I think, fought for this business model for quite some years. You remember the labor struggles, we had to push it through. I'm glad we took that pain, and we now start to see the gain.
That's great, Carsten. Could you just come back and just remind me why you've put Eurowings back into the reporting in the group, all the airlines together as before it was a separate kind of reporting line. I think it's obviously due to the way you restructure and manage the business.
What haven't we? You have to remind me. We always reported Eurowings individually, and then there's the Discover Airlines, as you know, operation, which is fit into the hubs in Frankfurt and Munich, that we don't report individually. The regular, let's call it the Eurowings Düsseldorf, has always been it's in- and we consolidate the numbers of our ownership in SunExpress there. Maybe I misunderstand. Please get back to me, or maybe even Dennis needs to help me if I don't get your question right.
No, I can comment, Carsten. Before Eurowings was a separate segment, as you call it, under the financial reporting. Now all the airlines are together into one segment. We still provide the separate results. In terms of insight, nothing changed. Only the total is from the total airlines together, including Eurowings, rather than having Eurowings separately from the rest.
Sorry, just-
Thanks, Carsten. Thanks, Remco. I get it. Yeah.
The next question is from the line of Sathish Sivakumar from Citi, p lease go ahead.
Morning, gentlemen. Thanks. Thanks for your time. I've got two questions here. First one on the cargo. What percentage of the volumes are actually on long-term contract? And more specifically, do you have any, like, a very specific block space agreement within your network? Again, this just goes back to the increasing stake from Kühne. I just want to understand, is there any block space agreement that you have right now, how things might change in the future? On slide five, the second one, actually, you mentioned that the premium segment is recovering stronger than non-premium. If you could actually share some color on the load factor in these two segments as of today versus 2019, and also any color on yield performance. Thank you.
Hello, Sathish. Let me start on the cargo question. As you probably would assume, with the great or strong demand-driven developments in cargo, we're of course reducing our long-term block space agreements, and we increase our ability to take advantage of the spot market. You have to understand, we see prices up to EUR 30-EUR 40 per kilo in some markets, so a lot more than you ever pay as a passenger, by the way, regardless of your body weight. That of course, is unseen, and therefore our yield management team in cargo, which works closely with the management team also in the passenger airlines and the way we train people and so on, so we try to get a high performance team there, just as we do in passenger, is taking advantage of that particular market situation and bringing down the long-term contracts.
Was that the first question? The second question, Remco, maybe a few more data points on our-
Yeah. To your question for the premium, whether the seat load factor and the yields are higher than the average. Clearly on the seat load factor, that's the case. On the premium, we are much higher booked. If you need exact numbers, we have to come back to you separately, but for sure it is more. On the yield, I would say it's on both ends. It's increasing. It's not that premium is much more increasing than non-premium.
Okay. Just to follow up on the first one, actually, on the block space agreement. What percentage of the capacity is actually on block space right now?
Oh, we don't publish that because, of course, it's part of our yield management to optimize this, but it's by far the minority, as you can imagine.
Okay, got it.
I won't say more than that. Don't tell my competitors how good we are at this.
Okay, thank you.
The next question is from the line of Johannes Braun from Stifel Europe, p lease go ahead.
Yes, thank you. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Three questions from me as well. Firstly, you said yields will be up for the remainder of the year. I was wondering if you could split that a bit more into, long-haul and short-haul, and also Mainline and Eurowings for that matter. Second question, coming back to the remaining stake of the German state, just a technical question, could this go also to an individual investor or does it have to be placed on the market? Then lastly, you mentioned the Swiss CLA with the pilots. Was wondering if you could give any more details in terms of what the duration is, and especially what the productivity gains are here.
Maybe you could also remind us what is the timeline and also the sticking points within the talks with Vereinigung Cockpit in Germany.
As always, we have to differentiate between the various pilot groups in the Lufthansa Group. We have Vereinigung Cockpit deals in Eurowings. We have deals in City Line, and then there is the main airline, which by now is more or less half of our pilots, not more anymore of the whole group, where we have successfully done crisis agreements, temporary crisis agreements, but we have not achieved any agreement on structural cost savings. After now two years, we took the decision, as you know, a few months ago, to therefore take a structural decision, which is creating a second City Line, which is not bound to scope clauses like the current City Line, neither in size nor in other elements.
That will allow us to change the mix in our feed traffic short-haul in Frankfurt and Munich by having a larger share of that feed done by those additional lower cost platforms. It's already partly done by CityLine, partly done by Edelweiss Air, partly done by Eurowings Discover, even though that's not a pure hub model, but a more point-to-point model, but of course it does feed into the hub. Now we are creating CityLine 2 to allow us A320 family operation in that lower cost platform, which also Remco pointed out in his speech, has been a strategy for some years now to create more growth in lower cost platforms than we have created growth in the main airline due to its cost disadvantages.
The CLA in Swiss, I must unfortunately say I don't have that information ready, how many years that it's lasting. You probably know that in Switzerland it's a different story anyway because it can be terminated, but I don't have that exact detail yet. Perhaps then a question on the conditions, correct, of the Swiss CLA. What is really well done here is that there's an agreement on the flexibility. Because if the business is going significantly better and much more work is required, there are more favorable conditions than actually when there is a more low season element and business is doing worse. That there is a clear benefit on the cockpit side, but also when it goes the other way, that there is also an equal share of the burden that is there.
We are very happy with that conclusion because that drives flexibility, and that is what we need. Now to come back on your first question with regard to the yields and the split between short and long-haul. When you have to think about the remaining part of the year and the high single digits we said overall, you have to think about short-haul and double-digit increases. You have to think for the long-haul about mid single-digit increases. The short haul is growing faster, but both are growing up. If you compare it to 2019, right? Last year, you know that short-haul was still about 14% behind 2019. For the remaining part of the year, we expect to come close to the 2019 level.
It might be slightly below, but we're targeting to come very close. For the long-haul, it would be mid-single-digit increase versus 2019. All in all, you see the outstanding performance of our colleagues in the sales de-sales department. This is also where we need to be flexible in this to bring the company back to a good, profitable value-creating company. I hope that answers your question.
That's very helpful, yeah. Thank you.
The next question is from the line of Jarrod Castle from UBS, p lease go ahead.
Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Good to see how quickly the pension deficit's coming down. Just want to get a bit of color related to maybe future payments around the pension if this is, you know, gonna be on hold now indefinitely. Kind of related, I guess, to future payments, any thoughts on dividend payments going forward? Just coming back to new bookings above 19 levels. I mean, if this continues, you know, either you need to kind of increase pricing, I guess, you know, to kind of fill the capacity, because sounds like you're not going back to 100%. It sounds like there's more demand out there than the supply that you're putting into the market at the moment.
You know, are we gonna see an acceleration in pricing, as you build back your load factors? Or potentially could we see a bit more capacity than planned if at the moment bookings are above 2019 levels? And then just a question around fuel. I mean, obviously we've got these elevated crack spreads for jet kerosene in an environment where obviously globally airlines are flying materially lower volumes. I mean, any color on what you feel is causing this and how the crack spreads, I guess, normalize to previous levels of, you know, maybe 10, 15% rather than more than double that level? Thanks.
I can take these. First on the pensions, correct? Yes, there's increase in the discount rate is bringing the liability down. We see further at this point in time in Q2, the discount rate going further up. So depending on how equity and bond markets develop, we could see further decreases in this quarter, and clearly that helps. Since I came in, I also said that with that discount rate and also our liabilities which relate to that, the defined benefit plan with which is the case, which is more than 20 years out, and the fact that our asset has always delivered a return which significantly above the discount rate, which is needed to be actually on a zero liability, there's no need to fund on the DB plan. We will not fund this plan.
We didn't do that last year or not this year, and also currently as I see it, there's no need. Of course, we have obligations from the defined contribution plan. That is the active plan, both in Germany but also Switzerland and other ones. Of course, for the defined contribution plan, we are funding every year. Last year, we funded both 2020 and 2021 because we were behind on 2020 for Germany, and we will keep on doing that. You have to think in about an amount, I think all in of about EUR 400 million a year. So that is quite consistent and normalized. With regards to the bookings, correct? The pricing, our policy is still to find the right balance between demand, capacity and yield management. We keep on doing that.
I think you see for the rest of the year, quite an increase in capacity, correct? If you think about 57% to 75% to peak coming to 85%, and of course next year that will go further up. We manage that well to make sure there's a good return, and that we will continue. I think your second pricing was your question really increased pricing and dividends. I think when you think about dividends from a shareholder perspective, it's too early. Of course, when we become profitable again and we create positive free cash flow, et cetera, again, at some point we'll also come back to paying the shareholders dividend again, but it will be too early to comment when that will be. Last question on the jet crack.
It becomes a bit technical, but to give you the proper answer. Like crude oil, with certain crude oil, you can make diesel, heating oils and jet fuel. With the current crisis which is out there, the demand for particularly diesel, but also for heating oil as a replacement of gas, that demand has gone up since the beginning of the year. The jet fuel at the beginning of the year, when you think about January and you compare it now, has almost doubled. In that equation, there is significantly more demand for the refineries who produce diesel, heating oil and jet fuel, and that squeeze we are currently in. The refineries are increasing their overall capacity.
This is combined with most of the refineries related to this transfer of oil in these commodities comes from Russian oil. As you know, Russian oil is being stopped to come in here, so the oil has to come from somewhere else, which we are currently processing. That's the other dynamic which is in. We hope that this very unusual squeeze will stop soon because there is all the logic in it that it changes. If you would think about the last 25 years, only in 2008 there was an increase to a level of $40[Inaudible] per barrel, mainly at that time also because of a high request for the jet fuel and the overall demand.
It's quite unusual and that normally would say that it would come down again very soon. That uncertainty is also the reason why we're not giving an outlook because we don't know, and it really is outside our control for the moment. I hope that a little bit longer answer explains that to you.
No, great. Thanks very much.
The next question is from the line of Andrew Lobbenberg from HSBC, p lease go ahead.
Morning, everybody. Thanks for the discussions. That last one, very interesting. Thanks, Remco. Can I come back on the labor? If Vereinigung Cockpit don't agree anything on Mainline, does anything happen, or does it just mean that you proceed with the plan to CityLine 2? Indeed, is CityLine 2 all done? Is it all straightforward to launch? A second question related to that is, you know, you were talking about how, you know, you have lower cost fleet platforms of Edelweiss, even of Eurowings Discover, CityLine 1, CityLine 2. Do consumers not care anymore about brands? Because obviously you're selling Lufthansa as a premium experience, and yet there's heaven only knows what painted on the side of the blooming airplanes.
Are consumers not bothered about brands or do you make it seamless enough? The final question I guess would be about United really, because you describe yourself as being the most cautious of the flag carriers, and that's giving you a yield premium, and yet your darling partners in the U.S are the most aggressive expansionist people internationally by a long, long way. You know, given that you guys are in a revenue sharing agreement, does that not have sort of or depressing effect on your depressing influence on your unit revenue prognosis? Isn't it a bit alarming that they're quite so aggressive in pouring capacity into these markets where you're hoping to get decent yields?
Andrew, good morning. Yeah, I'll start with the last one. First of all, I think it's worth to say that all three joint ventures are more or less in line when it comes to their, you know, developments on the North Atlantic. You're probably right, there's always a little bit more to it from the American side than there is from the European side. On the other hand, you know that our American friends in all three major carriers are canceling more and more of those flights due to operational reasons. I think in the end, the difference will not be as large as maybe what we had, all announced in the last days and weeks. Indeed, there is a formula.
There's not only one formula, there's a very complex system of formulas in that joint venture, which also partly reflects who is growing more than the other and who's therefore taking more yield risk and making sure that that is not being put on the other side either. Part of that element I think you're describing we will not see in that magnitude as you're describing it. It is in line with what the other alliances are doing, and even if that comes into effect, there is a formula in the model which will make sure that Lufthansa is not disadvantaged. On the first two on labor, what happens if we don't agree? As you know, at least you know, in Germany, contracts are continuing unless you replace them by something else.
If we don't have a new agreement, a CLA by the end of June, which is when the current contract is running out, it'll just continue until we find a new agreement. On CityLine 2, that is not the beginning of this period. It's the learning from those two years where we didn't achieve structural cost savings. That is ongoing and we actually already got the license for the legal founding of the company and now the German government and the German authorities have to authorize that, but it's more or less a bureaucratic process which is on track. That has, in my view, therefore, if I understand your question right, no impact on what we achieve with the Mainline pilots. It's always the Mainline airline pilots in Vereinigung Cockpit.
What we needed from them, I think, to make no new platform necessary is not realistic anymore. For us, that second City Line is a go and will make us more cost efficient in our hub fleet. That comes to your second question, does the customer care? I would go as far that even you as an expert, if you're on a City Line airplane from wherever, Munich to Düsseldorf or from Frankfurt to London, you wouldn't notice. That plane, that airplane, the branding, the product on board, the training of the flight attendants is completely in line with our premium promise we give on the main airline. On City Line, sorry, on Edelweiss, we even get higher grades from our customers than we get for short-haul on Lufthansa. Discover Airlines, it's a different story.
There we are using a different brand, a different product promise, more leisure-oriented. Needless to say, the feedback is very good now after the first year, but it's a different customer experience. We make sure that we only use those airplanes on those leisure markets because it's a different customer segment. That's why also when I described it as part of our hub fleet, you might recall I said that kind of a edge to it. This is not completely integrated, but of course there are also transfer passengers on Discover Airlines. The two CityLines and Edelweiss are fully integrated and again, the customer experience is at least as in CityLine, the same as on the main airline. On Edelweiss it's even rated a little higher. Operation of the second CityLine will be summer next year.
Same thing, the customer will not notice. We are definitely thinking about copying CityLine's business model here, which will allow us to use that same seamless customer promise you have been asking for.
Lovely. Thank you very much.
This concludes our Q&A session. I hand back to Dennis Weber.
Yeah. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your interest this morning. We look forward to being in touch with you over the next few weeks as part of our investor outreach activities. If there are any open questions, we don't think so, of course, please reach out to the IR team. Have a good day now. Bye-bye.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded, y ou may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.