Lufthansa

Deutsche Lufthansa AG, known simply as Lufthansa, is a big German airline. It is Germany’s national airline and part of the Lufthansa Group. This group is the second-biggest airline group in Europe for the number of passengers it carries.

Lufthansa is one of the founding members of Star Alliance, the world’s largest group of airlines working together.

The Lufthansa Group includes other airlines such as Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, Eurowings, and Swiss International Air Lines. These airlines work together to offer flights all around the world.

Lufthansa started in 1953, created by former employees of Deutsche Luft Hansa, Germany’s earlier national airline. Deutsche Luft Hansa stopped operating in 1951, but the new company used its name and logo in 1954. Today, Lufthansa’s main office is in Cologne. Its biggest airport is Frankfurt Airport, with another important hub at Munich Airport.

History

Lufthansa started in 1926 when a German airline called Deutsche Luft Hansa was formed in Berlin. After World War II, the airline was dissolved, and a new one was created in 1953. In 1955, it began regular flights between cities in Germany and soon expanded to international destinations.

Lufthansa's first aircraft, a Convair 340 (type pictured), was delivered in August 1954.

Lufthansa adopted jet planes in the late 1950s, which allowed faster travel. In the 1970s and 1980s, it introduced larger planes called "wide-bodies". Throughout the years, Lufthansa grew by adding new airlines to its group and expanding its routes worldwide.

In more recent years, Lufthansa faced challenges such as economic difficulties and the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to flight cancellations. Despite these challenges, the airline continues to adapt and plans for the future.

Revenue passenger-kilometers, scheduled flights only, in millions
Year	Traffic
1955	78
1960	1,284
1965	3,785
1969	6,922
1971	8,610
1975	13,634
1980	21,056
1989	36,133
1995	61,602
2000	94,170

Corporate affairs

Lufthansa Group has three main parts: Passenger Airlines, Logistics, and MRO, plus Additional Businesses and Group Functions.

Passenger airlines

Lufthansa Group includes several airlines besides its main one. These include:

Network airlines

Lufthansa Airlines — Germany’s main airline based in Frankfurt and Munich.
Austrian Airlines – Austria’s main airline based at Vienna International Airport
Swiss International Air Lines – Switzerland’s main airline based at Zurich Airport
Brussels Airlines – Belgium’s main airline based at Brussels Airport
ITA Airways – Italy’s main airline based at Rome Fiumicino Airport, taking over from Alitalia. It is owned by the Italian government (59%) and Lufthansa Group (41%), with chances to own it fully later.

Feeder airlines

Lufthansa City Airlines – A regional airline based in Munich that started in June 2024 under the Lufthansa City brand.
Air Dolomiti – An Italian regional airline based in Villafranca di Verona and operating from Munich and Frankfurt.

Lufthansa Group passenger fleet size, including subsidiaries and excluding cargo (wholly owned)

Low-cost airlines

Eurowings – A German low-cost airline based in Düsseldorf.
Eurowings Europe Ltd. – A Maltese low-cost airline, part of Eurowings Group. It used to be called Eurowings Europe GmbH (2016–2023) and was based in Austria.

Leisure airlines

Discover Airlines — A German airline for leisure trips, originally called Eurowings Discover.
Edelweiss Air – A Swiss leisure airline, part of Swiss International Air Lines.
SunExpress – A Turkish leisure airline owned equally by Lufthansa Group (50%) and Turkish Airlines

Former

British Midland International – Sold to International Airlines Group and merged into British Airways in 2012
Condor Flugdienst – Shares were bought by Thomas Cook AG, then Thomas Cook Group
Luftfahrtgesellschaft Walter – Merged into Eurowings in 2017, sold to Zeitfracht in 2019
Lufthansa CityLine – A German regional airline based in Munich, shut down by Lufthansa in 2026.
Lufthansa Italia – An Italian airline from 2009 to 2011
SunExpress Deutschland – A German part of SunExpress from 2011 to 2020
Team Lufthansa – A group of regional airlines from Germany, Denmark, Austria, and France from 1996 to 2004. It was replaced by Lufthansa Regional in 2004

Some Lufthansa Group airlines are part of the Star Alliance.

Investment history

Lufthansa bought a share in JetBlue Airways in 2007 and made a code-sharing deal.

On 28 October 2008, Lufthansa bought more of BMI, adding to what it already owned.

On 25 May 2023, Lufthansa announced it would buy part of ITA Airways.

In January 2025, Lufthansa bought a share in AirBaltic, Latvia’s main airline.

The Lufthansa Aviation Center at Frankfurt Airport by architect Christoph Ingenhoven

On 20 November 2025, Lufthansa Group said it wanted to buy part of Portugal’s national airline — TAP Air Portugal.

Joint ventures

Lufthansa Group has four important joint ventures:

The Atlantic Joint Venture of Air Canada, United Airlines, Austrian Airlines, Lufthansa, SWISS, Brussels Airlines and Eurowings.
The Europe Japan Joint Venture of All Nippon Airways, Austrian Airlines, Lufthansa and SWISS.
The Europe Singapore Joint Venture of Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, Lufthansa, SWISS and Singapore Airlines.
The Europe China Joint Venture of Air China, Shenzhen Airlines, Austrian Airlines, Lufthansa, and SWISS.

Logistics

Lufthansa Group’s Logistics part includes Lufthansa Cargo, the airfreight container expert Jettainer group, the time:matters group for urgent shipments, the Heyworld subsidiary for e-commerce, and CB Customs Broker for customs. It also includes a 50% share in the cargo airline AeroLogic.

MRO

Lufthansa Group’s MRO part is Lufthansa Technik, the world’s top independent provider of maintenance, repair and overhaul for civilian planes.

In 2008, Lufthansa Technik restored a Junkers Ju 52/3m built in 1936 to fly again; it used to fly from Berlin to Rome over the Alps in the 1930s. Lufthansa is now restoring a Lockheed Super Constellation.

Additional businesses and group functions

The Additional Businesses and Group Functions part includes service companies like Lufthansa Aviation Training and Lufthansa Systems, plus Group Functions for the whole Lufthansa Group.

Until April 2009, Lufthansa used systems for inventory and departure control. Lufthansa moved its reservation systems to Amadeus in the early 1990s.

Since 2007 Lufthansa Systems, the IT part of the group, has used solutions from Actian, for its Lido/FlightPlanning tool. This tool is used by around 300 commercial airlines worldwide for planning flights.

Lufthansa Cargo, the cargo airline part of Lufthansa, uses Zeenea Data Discovery Platform as its data catalog. Zeenea is a French metadata management startup. On August 8, 2024, HCLSoftware said it would buy Zeenea for 24 million euros.

Ownership

Lufthansa was owned by the government until 1994. Deutsche Lufthansa AG shares have been sold on German stock markets since 1966. It is a DAX index share and listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange’s Prime Standard.

Business trends

The key trends for the Lufthansa Group are (as of the end of the calendar year):

The key trends for Lufthansa Airlines are (as of the end of the calendar year):

Headquarters

Lufthansa’s main office is in Cologne. In 1971, Lawrence Fellows of The New York Times called the then-new headquarters building in Cologne “gleaming”. In 1986, the building was bombed. No one was hurt. In 2006, builders started the first stone of the new Lufthansa headquarters in Deutz, Cologne. By the end of 2007, Lufthansa planned to move 800 workers, including the finance department, to the new building. However, in early 2013, Lufthansa said it would move its main office from Cologne to Frankfurt by 2017.

Several Lufthansa departments are not at the main office; they are at the Lufthansa Aviation Center at Frankfurt Airport. These departments include Corporate Communications and Investor Relations. The modern, high-tech, energy-saving Aviation Center with big windows and indoor gardens was designed by Christoph Ingenhoven.

Employment relations

Lufthansa and its pilots have had tense relations in recent years, with many strikes.

Branding

The Lufthansa logo, a circle with a flying crane, was first made in 1918 by Otto Firle. It was used by the first German airline, Deutsche Luft-Reederei (DLR), which started flying on 5 February 1919. In 1926, Deutsche Luft Hansa used this symbol, and in 1954, Lufthansa kept it and later in 1963 – a version redesigned by Robert Lisovskyi.

The person believed to have created the name Lufthansa is F.A. Fischer von Puturzyn. In 1925, he published a book called "Luft-Hansa" looking at choices for aviation leaders at the time. Luft Hansa was the name given to the new airline, made by merging Junkers’ airline (Luftverkehr AG) and Deutscher Aero Lloyd.

After World War II, the company kept blue and yellow as its main colours and the crane logo. Since the 1960s, Helvetica has been used for the company name on planes.

German designer Otl Aicher made a full design for the airline in 1967.

Aicher’s design was kept in the 1988 design.

In 2018, Lufthansa changed its design. The circle with the crane stayed, but the background changed from yellow to dark blue.

The company slogan is ‘Say yes to the world.’

Year	Revenue (in billion €)	Net income (in billion €)	Employees	Passengers (in millions)	Passenger load factor (%)	Cargo load factor (%)	Aircraft
2009	22.2	(0.04)	117,000	77.3	77.9	60.6	722
2010	27.3	1.1	117,000	91.2	79.3	68.0	710
2011	28.7	(0.01)	116,000	100	77.6	66.8	636
2012	30.1	0.99	117,000	103	78.8	66.9	627
2013	30.0	0.31	118,000	104	79.8	69.1	622
2014	30.0	0.05	118,000	106	80.1	69.9	615
2015	32.0	1.6	120,000	107	80.4	66.3	602
2016	31.6	1.7	124,000	109	79.1	66.6	617
2017	35.5	2.3	129,000	130	80.9	69.3	728
2018	35.5	2.1	135,000	141	81.5	66.6	763
2019	36.4	1.2	138,000	145	82.6	61.4	763
2020	13.5	(6.7)	110,000	36.4	63.2	69.6	757
2021	16.8	(2.1)	105,000	46.9	61.6	71.4	713
2022	32.7	0.79	109,000	101	79.8	60.3	710
2023	35.4	1.6	96,600	122	82.9	56.4	721
2024	37.5	1.3	101,000	131	83.1	58.2	735
2025	39.5	1.3	103,000	135	83.2	58.3	737
2020: Activities and income in fiscal 2020 were severely reduced by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic

Year	Revenue (in billion €)	Net income (in billion €)	Employees	Passengers (in millions)	Passenger load factor (%)	Aircraft
2016	15.4	1.6	34,126	62.4	79.1	350
2017	16.4	2.1	33,779	65.8	81.6	357
2018	15.8	1.7	34,754	69.8	81.3	351
2019	16.6	1.1	39,582	72.4	82.5	364
2020	4.1	(4.7)	37,741	17.9	62.1	421
2021	5.0	(2.5)	35,738	23.5	60.3	389
2022	13.1	(0.43)	34,408	51.7	79.9	386
2023	16.1	0.86	36,707	60.2	82.4	381
2024	16.5	(0.11)	39,323	64.4	82.8	387
2025	17.1	0.17	39,858	65.7	83.4	387
2020: Activities and income in fiscal 2020 were severely reduced by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic

Destinations

Main article: List of Lufthansa destinations

Lufthansa flies to many places in 2026. It also flies with its partner airline, Lufthansa City Airlines.

The airline works together with other airlines in two ways:

Interline agreements

Lufthansa has special travel plans with these partners:^{[citation needed]}

Codeshare agreements

Sister airlines

Lufthansa shares flights with these airlines in its group:

Other airlines

Lufthansa also shares flights with these other airlines:

Fleet

Lufthansa, a major German airline, has used many types of airplanes. One of the biggest planes they used is called the Airbus A380. They first ordered fifteen of these huge planes, but later kept only twelve. These planes flew from big cities like Frankfurt and Munich.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Lufthansa stopped using the A380 planes for a while. But in 2022, they brought them back because people wanted to fly more international trips again. The airline brought back eight of these planes and started flying them to places like Boston, New York, Los Angeles, and Bangkok.

Lufthansa also names its airplanes after cities. For example, some planes are named after German cities like Berlin, Hamburg, and Munich. They also named planes after cities outside of Germany to thank places that helped during difficult times, like Gander and Halifax in Canada.

Services

Frequent-flyer programme

Main article: Miles & More

Lufthansa has a frequent-flyer programme called Miles & More. This programme is shared with several European airlines, including Lufthansa's subsidiary airlines, Croatia Airlines, LOT Polish Airlines, and Luxair. Members can earn miles on Lufthansa and Star Alliance partner flights. Status levels depend on points earned from flights.

Cabins

First Class

First Class is available on some large planes. These seats turn into beds and have power outlets and entertainment. Lufthansa provides special check-in and lounge services for First Class passengers in major airports.

Business Class

Business Class is found on all long-haul flights. These seats also turn into beds and have power outlets and entertainment. Lufthansa offers special check-in and lounge services for Business Class passengers at most airports.

Premium Economy

Lufthansa introduced Premium Economy in 2014 on long-haul flights. These seats have more space and a personal entertainment screen.

Bus service

Lufthansa started a bus service between Nuremberg Airport and Munich Airport in 2021, replacing short flights between the two cities.

Customer issues

In May 2022, during a flight from New York to Frankfurt, some passengers did not follow mask rules. This led to a situation where some passengers who were Jewish could not board their next flight to Budapest. Most of them were able to fly on other flights that same day. In August 2022, Lufthansa took steps to prevent unfair treatment and appointed a manager to handle these issues. In October 2024, Lufthansa paid a fine to the US Department of Transportation to settle the matter. They said the problem was due to mistakes in communication and denied any unfair treatment.