In this episode of our ‘Sustainability in the Air’ podcast, Claudia Huegel, Senior Director, Head of ESG Rating and Reporting, Lufthansa Group, speaks with SimpliFlying CEO Shashank Nigam about how the group approaches sustainability across its strategy, its reporting, and its work with customers.
Lufthansa Group is one of the major airline groups in the world. Its principal airline, Lufthansa, is Germany's flag carrier and one of the five founding members of the Star Alliance, the world’s first and largest airline alliance. The Lufthansa Group owns several other airlines, including Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, Discover Airlines, Eurowings, ITA Airways, and SWISS.
Here are the key highlights of the conversation:
Why sustainability is embedded in Lufthansa’s DNA (2:38)
Lufthansa’s strategy to reach net zero (6:57)
Fleet renewal and the AeroSHARK foil (9:37)
The story behind Green Fares (13:43)
Defending against greenwashing claims (18:33)
Lufthansa Cargo and corporate bulk deals (24:01)
Mandates versus incentives for SAF (33:19)
Balancing growth against the 2030 target (37:38)
Rapid Fire! (42:48)
Keep reading for a detailed overview of the episode.
Why involving the customer matters to Lufthansa
Lufthansa Group has offered passengers the option to compensate for their emissions through a partnership with myclimate since around 2008. For years, however, uptake remained extremely low. Huegel believes the turning point came when the option became part of the fare selection itself, rather than an afterthought in the booking process. Making the choice more visible, she says, encouraged more customers to engage.
Huegel is equally candid about the commercial reality behind the approach. “We would like to involve the customer from the very beginning because it is no secret that sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is much more expensive than fossil fuel.”
Customer participation is as much a communications challenge as a commercial one. She says SAF is inherently complex to communicate to customers because of its limited availability and the way it is accounted for.
Yet she believes airlines have a responsibility to keep the conversation going. Lufthansa has therefore focused on explaining clearly how its Green Fares offering works. She emphasises that transparency is the best defence for airlines against accusations of greenwashing.
4 ways Lufthansa is bringing sustainability to the customer
1. Fleet renewal and operational efficiency lead the way
Huegel states that despite the visibility of customer-facing initiatives such as Green Fares, they are not expected to deliver the bulk of Lufthansa’s emissions reductions this decade.
Instead, she says the biggest contribution will come from replacing older aircraft with more fuel-efficient models. As she puts it: “If we renew an older aircraft with one of the most modern technologies, fuel efficiency can improve by 15-25%, depending on the aircraft.” Around 45 aircraft are due to join Lufthansa’s fleet this year, with more than 230 on order.
Alongside the fleet, Huegel describes fuel efficiency as something close to her heart, in part because it is an area where the airline has greater control. Unlike aircraft deliveries or SAF production, operational improvements can be implemented immediately.
She also points to Lufthansa’s “OPS Sustainability program", which typically includes between 80 and 100 projects at any one time. These range from training pilots in fuel-efficient operating procedures to using AeroSHARK riblet technology, a sharkskin-inspired, durable bionic film that optimises aerodynamic performance.
2. Green fares that put the choice up front
Lufthansa Group introduced its Green Fares as a way of giving customers a more sustainable travel option at the point of booking. Launched in 2023, Green Fares allow passengers to offset their individual flight-related CO2 emissions on short and medium-haul flights. This is achieved by using a combination of 20% SAF, with the remaining 80% offset through contributions to high-quality climate protection projects.
Huegel shares that the idea predates the COVID-19 pandemic, although bringing it to market required extensive work with pricing and revenue management teams to determine what the fare should include and whether it was commercially viable.
While the program’s initial uptake was modest, at around 1% at launch, it increased to around 5% of eligible bookings last year, up from 4% the previous year. She attributes part of that growth to making the Green Fares option visible during the booking process.
The airline also chose to be explicit about how the product works, explaining that the equivalent amount of SAF is supplied to the airline’s network within six months rather than used on the passenger’s specific flight. Huegel argues that this level of transparency is essential both for building trust and for avoiding accusations of greenwashing.
3. Making SAF visible, from fuel farms to cargo
For Lufthansa, raising customer awareness about SAF goes beyond the booking process. Nigam recalls seeing Lufthansa’s SAF-branded fuel tanks while transiting through Frankfurt Airport, describing them as a simple yet effective way of reaching passengers across the airport, regardless of which airline they were flying.
Huegel says the same approach extends across the wider Lufthansa Group. She points to Lufthansa Cargo’s SAF campaigns, including dedicated marketing to freight customers and initiatives that allow cargo clients to purchase SAF contributions for their shipments, as another example of how the company is trying to make the significance of SAF more visible to customers.
That communication is backed by a commercial strategy. Corporate customers, she says, are offered bulk SAF deals built around their travel patterns and emissions. Moreover, the sales teams receive dedicated training so they can explain both the fuel and the carbon accounting to travel buyers. Lufthansa’s sustainability managers also work with corporate travel departments to help customers understand how SAF fits into their decarbonisation strategies.
4. Mandates, incentives and where the money goes
When it comes to policy, Huegel is careful not to take an absolutist position. She acknowledges that the ReFuelEU Aviation mandate achieved its initial 2% SAF blending requirement in 2025, but points out that much of the fuel was imported rather than produced in Europe.
In her view, that exposes the limits of relying on mandates alone to stimulate domestic production. As she puts it: “If you look at production, I think it works better with incentives than with mandates. Otherwise, we would have had more [SAF] production in Europe.”
She sees synthetic aviation fuels as a clear example of the challenge. Although demonstration projects are progressing, she notes that none has yet reached a final investment decision (FID) yet, reflecting the uncertainty around technology choices, production costs and long-term investment signals.
Huegel also questions how existing policy revenues are being used. Reiterating a recent panel discussion at the Sustainable Aviation Futures Congress in Amsterdam, she shares how panellists described the EU’s Emissions Trading System as an “ATM”, collecting payments from airlines without channeling any investments into decarbonising aviation.
“All we want is for what we pay to go toward building [SAF] infrastructure,” she adds.
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