Airline Restructuring 

Whatever specific challenges your airline is facing – whether operational, financial, or market-driven – Lufthansa Consulting can help you take decisive and timely action to make the right decisions for the future. In times of crisis, it is important to act quickly to stabilize the business model and lay the foundation for sustainable growth. Successfully restructuring an airline for future growth therefore requires a short, medium and long-term perspective.  

In the short term, our experts focus on the operational turnaround of your airline. Leveraging our deep expertise in airline restructuring and experience from various projects, we secure the liquidity of your company, evaluate demand, and quickly adapt the operating model to minimize costs and ensure financial stability. 

In the medium term, we drive the structural turnaround of your airline. By implementing a comprehensive restructuring plan, we help you to create flexible and cost-effective structures and optimize the airline to better respond to changing market conditions.  

Our long-term approach focuses on the strategic turnaround. Through detailed analysis of core processes and customer needs, we redefine your strategy and implement a target operating model to realize a resilient and future-proof business model. 

Airline restructuring is an essential part in the aviation industry, encompassing a range of processes and steps, including a functional review regarding strategy, finance, commercial, operations, MRO and organization. To deliver sustainable results, we employ a proven three-step project approach: strategic assessment, blueprinting, and implementation. 

In the first step, the strategic assessment seeks to identify an airline’s current strengths, challenges, and opportunities based on industry benchmarks. This assessment highlights performance gaps and uncovers “quick wins” for immediate improvement. Leveraging aviation consulting expertise, we analyze core functions to establish a clear understanding of the airline’s status quo and implement impactful early actions.  

In the second step, and at the heart of airline restructuring, Blueprinting seeks to define the strategy and business plan of the future airline. During this phase, a comprehensive business model is developed for the airline, along with an implementation roadmap. This includes a commercial and operational concept with guiding core values and specific measures that define the new airline strategy.  

Once an optimal business model and roadmap have been identified, our experts ensure seamless and efficient implementation of the suggested measures. By tailoring these steps to the airline’s unique needs and adapting to evolving market dynamics, we deliver measurable and sustainable results. 

Successful airline restructuring requires technical know-how paired with strategic consulting and customized solutions. As leaders in this field, Lufthansa Consulting offers comprehensive consulting services to support airline restructuring projects worldwide.  

Our aim is to quickly address and respond to your situation and challenges while ensuring sustainable future growth.
Our approach includes:  

• Diagnostic Baselining: We conduct in-depth commercial and operational assessment of your airline. The identification of various improvement measures helps airlines to return to profitability with recommendations that deliver strong EBIT potential.  

• Crisis Restructuring: We address the unique challenges caused by global crises in the aviation industry and design a comprehensive airline restructuring program to survive and ensure survival and long-term competitiveness. This includes an organizational restructuring with the planning of personnel restructuring targets.  

• Sustainable Restructuring: By developing a strategic blueprint, we ensure the path to long-term profitability. This includes optimizing network and fleet planning, commercial and operational concepts, and business and implementation plans.  

With our expertise and experience, we are at your side as a reliable partner to help you realize your vision of a modern and efficient airline.