Airline Profile: Lufthansa

Lufthansa, Germany's flag carrier and one of the world's largest airlines, serves over 205 destinations in more than 80 countries throughout Europe, the Americas, Africa, the Middle East and Asia/Pacific. Together with its partners, Lufthansa serves more than 410 destinations, worldwide.

History

Lufthansa can trace its history back to the foundation of Deutsche Luft Hansa in Berlin in January 1926 as a consolidated German airline with the main purpose of opening intercontinental air routes.

A reduced route network was maintained during the war until 1945 when the company went into liquidation.

On 6 January 1953, 'Luftag' was founded in Cologne and later renamed Lufthansa, with operations beginning on 1 April 1955. The first jet service was flown in 1960.

In January 1996 Lufthansa spun-off its technical and freight divisions to create, respectively Lufthansa Technik AG and Lufthansa Cargo AG.

Lufthansa, along with Air Canada, SAS, Thai and United Airlines was a founder member of the Star Alliance in 1997.

In March 2005 the shareholders of Swiss International Air Lines (Swiss) agreed to a takeover by Lufthansa. Swiss services were then integrated within the Lufthansa Group and the entire equity of Swiss was acquired through a Swiss-based holding company on 1 July 2007.

In December 2007 Lufthansa agreed to purchase up to 19 per cent of the shares in JetBlue.

In August 2008 Lufthansa began negotiations on the acquisition of an initial 45 per cent stake in Brussels Airlines, which was seen as the first step in a potential full acquisition of the Belgian carrier. The deal would be subject to European Commission regulatory approval, which the EC indicated in January 2009 was unlikely before mid-June 2009.

In October 2008 Lufthansa announced the intention to increase its shareholding in BMI to 80 per cent after BMI chairman Sir Michael Bishop exercised a put option to sell his 50 per cent, plus one share option to the German flag carrier. The acquisition was subject to regulatory approval but expected to be completed in early 2009.

In December 2008 Lufthansa agreed to buy Germanwings from Eurowings. The deal was completed on 1 January 2009.

Fleet

• 8x Airbus A300
• 89x Airbus A320 family aircraft
• 14x Airbus A330
• 48x Airbus A340
• 63x Boeing 737
• 30x Boeing 747



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