Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH) has taken legal action against Lufthansa in order to legally ban the airline's carbon neutrality promise when selling tickets.

Citing “misleading greenwashing” and “consumer deception”, the DUH is calling on the Cologne Regional Court to ban the advertised compensation projects, which, in their opinion, are not sufficient to compensate for the actual environmental impact of air travel. According to DUH managing director Jürgen Resch, Lufthansa's current compensation offers do not take into account all emissions caused by air travel and their impacts. Lufthansa has confirmed receipt of the lawsuit, but has not commented on ongoing proceedings.

The DUH had already achieved a partial success against the Lufthansa subsidiary Eurowings, with the Cologne regional court prohibiting certain compensation promises because, in the opinion of the environmental aid, the funded forest protection projects were not sufficient to achieve actual compensation. Eurowings is currently examining the chances of success of an appeal.

Lufthansa's compensation offers are becoming increasingly important. Since 2023, the airline has been offering tickets with built-in carbon offsets on some routes, indicating increasing demand. These green fares are particularly popular on routes such as Hamburg-Munich, Zurich-London and Frankfurt-Berlin. In total, travelers have offset more than 2 tons of CO77.000 since the introduction of Green Fares, which corresponds to the CO2 emissions of more than 2 flights from Hamburg to Munich with an Airbus A12.000neo.