Lufthansa's growth plans clipped by plane delivery delays

Lufthansa has cut its growth plans for the year citing a lack of planes and crew after reporting a 70% jump in profit for 2017 on Thursday. The airline group plans to increase capacity by 9.5% this year, down from plans in January for a 12% increase. Lufthansa has seen delays to deliveries of the Airbus A320neo plane, following engine problems at maker Pratt & Whitney. It has 10 A320neos in its fleet compared to expectations for 20. There have also been delays to deliveries of the Bombardier CSeries. Like other carriers such as easyJet, Lufthansa is seeking to fill the gap left in the German market by the collapse of Air Berlin last year. Lufthansa gave up a plan to acquire leisure carrier Niki from Air Berlin due to competition concerns and is instead expanding its Eurowings budget unit. However, retraining crews takes time and with other carriers expanding, there is little spare capacity in the market available to rent via wet leases. “We have a nice problem - too many passengers and too few planes,” CE Carsten Spohr said. Lufthansa is in final talks with Niki Lauda on leasing crewed planes from his Laudamotion airline, Spohr said. Lufthansa reported 2017 adjusted earnings before interest and tax of E2.97b, topping the E2.84b expected by analysts in a Reuters poll. That marked a third record year in a row but Lufthansa expects profits to slip this year due to fuel price increases. Lufthansa said it expected stable pricing this year and that so far it was “slightly positive” in Q1 and H1 2018. Unit revenues rose 1.9% in 2017, and were up 2.3% in Q4.<br/>