Germany's largest airline, Lufthansa, plans to stop operating flights from Frankfurt am Main to Beijing, Report informs referring to Swiss media.
A decision will ultimately be made in October, a company spokesman said.
The airline is "continuously evaluating and optimizing its entire route network, especially with particular consideration of profitability and the shortage of capacity due to delivery problems at aircraft manufacturers," he noted.
The news magazine Der Spiegel had previously reported that CEO Carsten Spohr had announced at an employee event in Munich that the core airline wanted to discontinue its daily connection from Frankfurt to Beijing. Lufthansa continues to fly from Munich to the Chinese capital.
The company spokesman referred to "extremely unequal competition" between European airlines and China and with airlines from the Persian Gulf and Bosporus, which benefit from low location costs, low social standards and high state investments in air transport.
In addition, these airlines can continue to use Russian airspace, which has been closed to European and American airlines since the introduction of sanctions against Russia because of the war in Ukraine.
They have to fly around Russian airspace, which is associated with higher kerosene costs.