State-owned airlines seen as challenge

[WASHINGTON] Deutsche Lufthansa is recovering from a pilot strike in April and views competition from state-owned carriers as one of its biggest challenges, its new chief executive told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.

Carsten Spohr, in Washington to attend a meeting with President Barack Obama and other executives about foreign investment in the United States, took over as head of Europe's largest airline by revenue earlier this month.

"The biggest challenge for a chief executive of a European airline, just as for my counterparts in the United States, is running privatised companies in an industry where government-owned airlines are gaining more and more market share," Mr Spohr said in one of his first interviews since becoming CEO.