Lufthansa putting on more business flights - CEO

BERLIN (Reuters) - Lufthansa is putting on more flights for business travellers in September and October, the chief executive of the German airline told Reuters on Wednesday.

"We are now seeing very clearly that business travellers are coming back," Carsten Spohr said, adding Lufthansa had increased capacity on domestic flights by 30% in September and would increase it by another 15% in October.

Lufthansa will reintroduce the hourly frequency of flights between Frankfurt and Hamburg and Frankfurt and Berlin in the mornings and evenings, times popular with business travellers.

"In Europe, we are already flying 60 percent of our programme again," Spohr said.

Business travel is seen only returning gradually after it collapsed during the coronavirus pandemic as many companies have slashed their travel budgets and have got used to holding meetings online.

Speaking on the sidelines of a conference in Berlin, Spohr said the air cargo business was booming.

"In air freight, due to the major unprecedented bottlenecks in global supply chains, the boom has even increased since the end of the summer holidays," he said.

(Reporting by Klaus Lauer Writing by Emma Thomasson; Editing by Mark Potter)