Green Fares: Lufthansa Group offer a first in sustainable travel

Lufthansa Group Tails
Lufthansa Group Tails
Lewis Chesworth 6 Min Read
6 Min Read

LONDON – Lufthansa Group is taking the next big leap in sustainability with a brand new air fare that allows people to choose if they want to fly more sustainably.

The so called “Green Fare” was launched on the 15th February 2023 and is available as a purchase option when flying on flights around Europe and select Northern African countries. These countries are Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia.

Lufthansa Group have also announced that these new Green Fares will be available on all Lufthansa Group airlines, which includes Lufthansa themselves, SWISS, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, Eurowings, Eurowings Discover, Edelweiss and Air Dolomiti.

The airline group has also said that the fares will be offered on a staggering 730,000+ flights per year, which means should at least one passenger per flight choose to purchase the Green Fare, the group could make a serious difference in its yearly emissions.

So how does it work?


You are able to purchase one of these Green Fares through any of the airlines websites when selecting which class you would like to fly in (business or economy).

To see what the process is like when booking a flight with a green fare, I went to Lufthansa’s website to begin the booking process for a random flight from Frankfurt to London Heathrow.

The option then appears as follows when you select either Economy or Business class:

Source: Lufthansa website

As you can see it appears under “Economy Green” and is considered a mid-way fare on the list of options, costing in this case 25 EUR more than a standard economy ticket.

This is the same when it comes to booking a business class fare as seen below:

Source: Lufthansa website

Of course in this case, the fare is significantly more expensive than an Economy Green ticket in this particular case.

However, it should be noted I was looking at flights for the 9th March 2023, so prices will naturally be high and it is likely if you book further in advance you can find both the Economy and Business Green Fares to be significantly cheaper.

What are the benefits?


Whenever passengers choose the Green Fare option as their method of travel, this will prompt the airline to include a 20% blend of Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAFs) as part of their upcoming flight.

On top of this, anyone who does purchase a Green Fare will gain additional points and miles for any rewards programs that Lufthansa accepts. Plus, passengers will also get a free rebooking option should travel plans change.

Christina Foerster, Member of the Lufthansa Group’s Executive Board responsible for Brand and Sustainability praised the launch, saying: “People don’t just want to discover the world – they also want to protect it at the same time.”

“We support our guests in this with suitable products. We already offer the most comprehensive portfolio for more sustainable travel and are now expanding this further with Green Fares.”

“The product launch is an important building block in our efforts to make air travel more climate friendly”.

Harry Hohmeister, Member of Lufthansa Group’s Executive Board responsible for Global Markets and Networks also said: “The Green Fares were successfully tested last year for flights from Denmark, Sweden and Norway. This showed that the demand for more sustainable travel offers is increasing.”

“Now we are consistently taking the next step and are adding Green Fares to our well known fare structure for flights throughout Europe and North Africa.”

“We are thus pioneering the industry and living up to our ambition to develop innovative solutions for aviation of the future and we are making it even easier for our customers to book more sustainable offers”.

Destination Sustainability


This next step in sustainability from the Lufthansa Group is quite important, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it helps the airline group get one step closer to achieving its two main sustainability goals:

  1. Halving CO2 emissions by 2030 in comparison to 2019
  2. Achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

As well as it being important for the Lufthansa Group, it is also important for the rest of the world and the group’s customers.

For example, this move to introduce a whole fare for passengers to choose when flying may set a benchmark for the other 2 airline groups in Europe (Air France-KLM & IAG).

In other words, the latter 2 groups may also choose to follow in the Lufthansa Group’s stride and introduce their own “Green Fares” or similar.

As far as the customers are concerned, according to the Lufthansa Group themselves, passengers clearly want this kind of option when booking flights.

Due to this, this may be another reason that we see other airline groups join in on introducing such fares.

Either way, the Lufthansa Group have set themselves as a role model for sustainable flying in Europe and it will be intriguing to see how much of a difference this will make to the Groups CO2 emissions in the long term.

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