Category Archives: Lufthansa

ITA Airways receives an Expression of Interest from MSC Group and Lufthansa

The Company announces that today it has received an Expression of Interest from the MSC Group and Lufthansa to acquire the majority of ITA Airways. The MSC Group has agreed with Lufthansa its participation in the partnership on terms to be defined during the Due Diligence.

Both the MSC Group and Lufthansa have expressed the wish that the Italian Government maintains a minority stake in the Company. Furthermore, the MSC Group and Lufthansa have requested 90 days of exclusivity to work on this Expression of Interest.

ITA Airways is satisfied that the work carried out in recent months to offer the best prospects to the company is starting to have the expected results, providing for a company recognized as viable for partners of international reputation both in passenger and cargo transport. The Board of Directors will examine the details of the Expression of Interest in an upcoming meeting.

Lufthansa is set to buy a 40% stake in ITA Airways

From Reuters:

“Lufthansa is set to buy a 40% stake in Alitalia’s successor ITA Airways and a deal could be unveiled next week, Italian daily Il Foglio reported on Saturday.”

Lufthansa resumes flights from Munich to Delhi

Lufthansa on January 18, 2022 resumed flights from its Munich hub to Delhi.

The route will operate three days a week with Airbus A350-900 aircraft.

Top Copyright Photo: Lufthansa Airbus A350-941 D-AIXK (msn 212) LAX (Michael B. Ing). Image: 956549.

Lufthansa aircraft slide show:

Lufthansa aircraft photo gallery:

Lufthansa to cut 33,000 flights in its winter schedule due to lower demand

From Deutsche Welle:

“Lufthansa is slashing its winter schedule as a result of reduced demand amid the omicron variant. It’s also struggling with pilots who are calling in sick over the holiday period.German air carrier Lufthansa plans to cut 33,000 flights from its winter schedule, about 10% of its total flight plan.”

“CEO Carsten Spohr told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper that there had been a sharp downturn in bookings, particularly in the mid-January to February period.”

Lufthansa announces its summer 2022 schedule, will add St. Louis

Lufthansa made this announcement for summer 2022:

Those who are already thinking about next year’s vacation can now book a dream vacation from over 160 destinations from Frankfurt and Munich. Whether the choice is to the Canary Islands or to exotic far off destinations, the Lufthansa Airlines flight schedule has a lot to offer. That’s because the 2022 summer flight schedule, offers an expanded portfolio of attractive new destinations as well as frequency increases on current routes and the resumption of services, which are now available for booking. The number of intra-European connections from Frankfurt and Munich will again almost reach the 2019 level with around 5,000 weekly flights.

News from Munich

Lufthansa is strengthening its premium hub in Munich. With the start of the summer flight schedule on March 27, 2022, the airline will for the first time fly nonstop from the Bavarian capital to the Brazilian metropolis of Rio de Janeiro and to San Diego in the United States. In addition, Bangkok in Thailand will again be served directly from Munich at the start of the summer flight schedule.

Lufthansa guests will be able to enjoy the Lufthansa Group’s most modern and economical long-haul aircraft, the Airbus A350-900, whose fleet in Munich is being expanded from 17 to 21 aircraft. In order to accelerate the modernization of its long-haul fleet, the Lufthansa Group signed leasing agreements for four additional Airbus A350-900s in the fall of 2021. These aircraft will be deployed by the core Lufthansa brand at its Munich hub, thus strengthening the premium offering there. In addition, five Airbus A340-600s with a First Class will be deployed again this summer.

In Europe, Lufthansa is offering six new vacation destinations from Munich. One of them: Kalamata in Greece. New destination in Spain: The island of Menorca. Also new: Varna on the Black Sea. Billund in Denmark and Bergen in Norway are new destinations in northern Europe. Starting in April, Air Dolomiti will also take in Brindisi in Italy.

Starting with the 2022 summer flight schedule, Eurowings Discover will also be taking off from Munich. The airline will fly to the sunny destinations in the Caribbean Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic and Cancún in Mexico. In addition, Las Vegas, Nevada (USA) will become a destination. Over the course of the summer flight schedule, Eurowings Discover’s flight plan also includes 22 short- and medium-haul tourist destinations, including the Canary Islands, destinations in Turkey and twelve Greek islands. The vacation airline is taking over the routes from Lufthansa as planned. New destinations include Samos and Skiathos in Greece.

New from Frankfurt

Lufthansa will fly to more destinations in the U.S. next year than ever before. A new addition will be St. Louis, (USA) in the U.S. state of Missouri for the first time from June 2022. This will be the first nonstop flight by an airline from continental Europe in around 20 years. The famous city on the Mississippi is home to numerous international companies.

Starting in the summer, Lufthansa will fly to Stavanger (Norway) and Liverpool (Great Britain) for the first time. And from May, the Breton capital Rennes (France).

Eurowings Discover will entice passengers with many attractive short-, medium- and long-haul destinations from Frankfurt in the summer of 2022: For North America fans, the flight schedule includes Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Fort Myers, Anchorage, Halifax and Calgary in addition to Tampa Bay. The airline’s current winter schedule will also include Victoria Falls (Zimbabwe), Kilimanjaro (Tanzania), Panama City and Malé in the Maldives this summer. In addition to the 19 long-haul destinations, Eurowings Discover also has a varied tourist short- and medium-haul offering, including to nine Greek islands, the Canary Islands, Portugal and Turkey. As planned, the routes will be taken over by Lufthansa during the summer.

Special fan flights to the Soccer World Cup in Qatar

Lufthansa is temporarily offering a total of 25 special fan flights from Frankfurt to Doha (Qatar) between November 14, 2022, and December 19, 2022, on the occasion of the 2022 Soccer World Cup in Qatar. Up to five flights a week will be available. Lufthansa plans to operate an Airbus A340-300 using the flight number LH 620. These flights can be booked from December 16, 2021.

Lufthansa stations four additional Airbus A350s at Munich Airport

Munich Airport made this announcement:

The decision announced by Lufthansa today to station four additional, state-of-the-art long-haul Airbus A350s at its Bavarian hub has been welcomed by Munich Airport.

For the Bavarian Finance Minister and Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Munich Airport, Albert Füracker, Lufthansa’s decision is a significant boon for Bavaria’s international links and mobility: “The expansion of the direct connections from Bavaria’s gateway to the world to major international cities will benefit all travelers and the entire economic area of Southern Germany. Therefore, the reinforcement of the long-haul fleet at Munich Airport with particularly fuel-efficient and low-emission aircraft is also very good news for all Bavarian companies that rely on fast and reliable international connections.”

Jost Lammers, CEO of Munich Airport, adds: “Especially in the current crisis, this is an extremely important signal that promises an additional boost for our premium hub in Munich. With now 21 Airbus A350s, Lufthansa can offer even more long-haul flights at its Bavarian hub and thus further consolidate Munich’s excellent international links. At the start of the upcoming summer flight schedule, for example, Lufthansa will serve two highly attractive long-haul destinations – San Diego and Rio de Janeiro – directly from Munich for the first time. It will also offer flights to Bangkok again.”

Lufthansa to add the Frankfurt – Liverpool route

Lufthansa on May 4, 2022 will add a new spoke route from its Frankfurt hub to Liverpool.

Demand for sustainable aviation fuel is on the rise

Lufthansa Group made this announcement:

CO₂-neutral flying is already possible today. The Lufthansa Group is pursuing an ambitious path for more climate friendly aviation and, since spring 2021, in addition to private travelers, has also been offering companies the option of using Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) for their flights. Steadily more of the Lufthansa Group’s corporate customers are interested in this climate friendly form of business travel or freight transportation. After the insurance company AXA Deutschland, the logistics service providers DB Schenker and Kuehne+Nagel, Kearney has now also become the first internationally active management consultancy to invest extensively in SAF. As a result, Kearney is now using the Lufthansa Group’s “Compensaid Corporate Program” to make the majority of its business flights CO₂-neutral.

“As Europe’s largest purchaser of Sustainable Aviation Fuel, we already enable CO₂-neutral flying. Among our corporate customers, we are seeing increasing interest in using this genuine alternative to fossil aviation fuel. Every company that already invests in Sustainable Aviation Fuel spurs the market ramp-up and thus makes an important contribution on the way to CO₂-neutral air transport,” says Christina Foerster, Member of the Lufthansa Group’s Executive Board responsible for Customer, IT & Corporate Responsibility.

Lufthansa Group continues to invest in Sustainable Aviation Fuel

A few days ago, the Lufthansa Group secured sustainable kerosene for a quarter of a billion US-Dollars in order to be able to meet the foreseeable increase in demand in the coming years. This is the largest pure sustainability investment in the history of the Lufthansa Group to date.

Sustainable Aviation Fuel is currently produced mainly from biogenic residues, for example from used cooking oils. This means that the new aviation fuel can, in perspective, enable nearly CO₂-neutral aviation. The Lufthansa Group has been involved in SAF research for many years and has built up an extensive network of partnerships. The company is already the largest buyer of SAF in Europe, a pilot customer of the first industrially produced Power-to-Liquid fuel worldwide, and also aims to be among the world’s leading airline groups in the use of sustainable kerosene.

Currently, very little SAF is available on the global market and it is significantly more expensive than conventional kerosene. The Lufthansa Group is therefore working on various projects to advance the development and availability of SAF including, in particular, SAF produced from renewable electrical energy. In addition to the use of more efficient, latest-generation aircraft, SAF are the most effective lever on the path to a CO₂-neutral aviation industry.

Lufthansa Group joins SBTi initiative

The Lufthansa Group has set ambitious climate protection goals and aims to halve net CO₂ emissions by 2030 compared to 2019 and to achieve a neutral CO₂ balance by 2050. To further specify these net targets, it has joined the so-called Science Based Target Initiative (SBTi) to bring its CO₂ reduction path in line with the United Nations Paris Climate Agreement. Based on scientific calculations, CO₂ emissions will be continuously reduced with the help of fleet renewal and optimization, improved operational efficiency and the use of SAF. The official validation will take place in 2022.

Lufthansa Group airlines offers 440 additional flights for Christmas and New Year’s Day

The airlines of the Lufthansa Group (Lufthansa, Swiss, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines and Eurowings) are offering around 80,000 additional seats on 440 extra flights for the upcoming holiday season and New Year. The airlines are now responding to the weeks-long increase in demand for flights during the Holiday vacations by resuming destinations and increasing the frequency of existing connections or deploying larger aircraft.

From its hubs in Munich and Frankfurt alone, Lufthansa is offering more than 120 additional flights with a capacity of 25,000 seats during the Christmas period.

In the U.S., New York and destinations in the state of Florida are booked particularly often. In Europe, destinations on the Spanish mainland and the Canary Islands, Portugal and other sunny destinations in the Mediterranean region as well as Scandinavia are in particularly high demand. In addition to these destinations, the snow-sure ski resorts in Lapland (northern Finland) are back on the flight schedule. Thus one reaches over the holiday season and New Year from Frankfurt Ivalo and Kuusamo as well as from Munich Kittilä in Lappland and Tromsö in Norway – Northern Light inclusive.

All flights are immediately bookable. With planning air travelers should consider in each case the appropriate current entry and quarantine regulations.

Flying CO₂ neutral today

Travelers can make a personal contribution to climate protection and make their air travel CO₂ neutral. In addition to the option of offsetting the flight via high-quality climate projects, Lufthansa guests can already fly with sustainable fuel today. The airlines of the Lufthansa Group have integrated the options into the booking process. Frequent flyers can find them in the Miles & More app.

First Lufthansa Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner to be named “Berlin”

Lufthansa made this announcement:

The German capital will receive a new “flying” ambassador: Lufthansa is naming its first Boeing 787-9 “Berlin.” The naming ceremony is set to take place following delivery of the aircraft next year.

“Berlin” is the first of five Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners that Lufthansa will add to its fleet in 2022. The ultra-modern long-haul aircraft consume on average only 2.5 liters of kerosene per passenger and 100 kilometers flown. That is around 30 percent less than predecessor aircraft. The CO2 emissions are also greatly improved.

Since 1960, Lufthansa has had a tradition of naming its aircraft after German cities. Willy Brandt, West Germany’s Chancellor in the late 1960s and 70s, honored Lufthansa during his tenure as Mayor of West Berlin (1957–1966) by naming the airline’s first Boeing 707 “Berlin”. More recently, an Airbus A380 with the registration identifier D-AIMI bore the prestigious name of Germany’s capital.

The first Lufthansa Boeing 787-9 – “Berlin” – will be registered D-ABPA. The first scheduled intercontinental destination for Lufthansa’s 787-9 will be Toronto, Canada’s financial center and hub.

Lufthansa and the German capital have a long and special relationship. The prewar company was founded in Berlin in 1926 and rose again to become one of the world’s leading airlines. Following the culmination of World War II and for 45 years, only the civilian aircraft of the ‘allies’ were allowed to land in the divided city. Since reunification, Lufthansa has been flying to Berlin for more than 30 years, with no other airline group flying so many Berliners all over the world in the past decades as Lufthansa and its sister carriers. Currently, the Lufthansa Group airlines connect the German capital to some 260 destinations worldwide, either with direct flight or through connections in one of the many group hubs.