Lufthansa is increasing cost-cutting measures as it battles high fuel costs and a gloomy booking environment, the company said on Wednesday.
Even though the airline increased its operating profit by 5.5 percent in the third quarter, chief executive Christoph Franz warned that times were still tough.
"The environment in which we have to operate is getting more and more demanding. So we will have to intensify our efforts," Franz said on Wednesday.
Europe's established airlines, hit by competition from discount carriers and Gulf rivals, are restructuring their businesses to reduce costs. Among others, Air France-KLM is shedding about 5,000 jobs, with Lufthansa cutting 3,500.
Lufthansa has also frozen investments and is combining its loss-making European short-haul unit with its low-cost carrier Germanwings.
Lufthansa had already warned in September that gains in its SCORE savings initiative would be offset by high jet fuel prices and a slowing economy, as well as fees and materials costs.
It predicted on Wednesday that fuel costs would rise by EUR€1.1 billion (USD$1.43 billion) this year to EUR€7.4 billion.
The company's third-quarter operating profit rose to EUR€648 million. Revenues rose 6.2 percent to EUR€8.31 billion.
Lufthansa reiterated its 2012 forecast that operating profit would be in the medium hundreds of millions of euros. That does not include restructuring costs, which it said it now expects to be no more than EUR€100 million this year because talks with unions on some planned measures have been delayed.
