Lufthansa To Integrate Its German Operations Control Centers

Lufthansa Group has begun planning how to integrate the separate operations control centers (OCCs) of its four German airlines, as a major intermediate step in a process that one day could see one center control the operations of all the group’s carriers.

Speaking to AIN in New York on Thursday, Hans-Michael Damm, director of Lufthansa German Airlines’ Global Operations Control Center, said integrating all Lufthansa Group airlines’ operations under the control of one OCC “would be very complicated.” However, he added, integrating its four German-airline operations under one OCC would prove not as difficult because all their aircraft carry German registry and the Luftfahr-Bundesamt (LBA), Germany’s civil aviation authority, certifies and oversees those carriers’ operations and crews.

Lufthansa Group’s other carriers—Air Dolomiti, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines and Swiss International Air Lines--respectively operate under the regulatory oversight of the Italian, Austrian, Belgian and Swiss national civil aviation authorities, making it much harder to integrate their operations control functions with those of the German carriers.

However, “the thinking process has already begun” for integration of the four German carriers’ OCCs, said Damm. Planning has begun as part of Lufthansa Group’s initiative to adopt a new executive board structure on January 1 to improve operational and administrative cooperation within the group and ensure all its premium carriers offer customers a consistent and integrated travel experience.

“We definitely could have dispatch, flight planning and mission support,” for the group’s German carriers handled by an integrated OCC, said Damm. “Mission support” includes functions such as flight tracking of every Lufthansa Group flight and ensuring that the operational requirements for each aircraft and its crews have full support throughout the route network.

Damm said the group could not complete integrating the operations control functions of Lufthansa German Airlines, CityLine, Eurowings and Lufthansa Cargo in 2016, largely because the LBA would need to approve integration of the four carriers’ operations.

He added that he sees various ways in which Lufthansa Group could integrate its German OCCs, including keeping them geographically separate but linking them extensively with videoconferencing and common IT systems.

Damm revealed to AIN that, as an early step in the consolidation process, Lufthansa’s Frankfurt Hub Control Center, now located next door to the Star Alliance headquarters in the Frankfurt Airport Center across the departure-level access road from the airport’s Terminal 1, will move to the same floor in the same building Lufthansa’s Global Operations Control Center occupies. The Global Operations Control Center is located in Lufthansa’s six-floor Flight Operations Control building, to the west of Terminal 1.