Lufthansa

Deutsche Lufthansa AG, known simply as Lufthansa, is a major German airline company. It is the national airline of Germany and is part of the Lufthansa Group, which is the second-largest airline group in Europe by the number of passengers it carries. Lufthansa is also one of the founding members of Star Alliance, the world's largest group of airlines working together.

The Lufthansa Group includes several 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 was created in 1953 by former employees of Deutsche Luft Hansa, Germany's earlier national airline. Although Deutsche Luft Hansa had to end its operations in 1951 because of its history during World War II, the new company took its name and logo in 1954. Today, Lufthansa's main office is in Cologne, and 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 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 and financial losses. Despite these challenges, the airline continues to adapt and plans for the future.

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.

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. In 2022, the Lufthansa Group was the second-largest in Europe by passengers, carrying 93 million people.

Investment history

Lufthansa bought a 19% share in JetBlue Airways in December 2007 and made a code-sharing deal. This was the first big investment by a European airline in an American one after the EU–U.S. Open Skies Agreement in 2008. Lufthansa sold this share in March 2015.

On 28 October 2008, Lufthansa bought another 60% of BMI, adding to the 20% it already owned. This led to a dispute with the former owner Sir Michael Bishop. They agreed in June 2009, and the purchase happened on 1 July 2009. Lufthansa bought the last 20% from Scandinavian Airlines on 1 November 2009, fully owning BMI.

On 25 May 2023, Lufthansa announced it would pay €325 million to buy 41% of ITA Airways. Lufthansa also has the chance to buy the rest of ITA later, with the price depending on how well ITA does.

In January 2025, Lufthansa bought a 10% share in AirBaltic, Latvia’s main airline.

On 20 November 2025, Lufthansa Group said it wanted to bid 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. Lufthansa Cargo also invests in handling companies and smaller firms in digitalisation.

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, using parts from three of these planes bought at auctions. Lufthansa’s Super Constellations and L1649 "Starliners" flew routes like Hamburg–Madrid–Dakar–Caracas–Santiago. Lufthansa Technik uses retired workers and volunteers for skilled jobs.

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 Unisys-based systems for inventory and departure control, managed by LH Systems. Lufthansa moved its reservation systems to Amadeus in the early 1990s. After deciding to outsource all Passenger Service System parts, the work went to the Altéa platform run by Amadeus.

Since 2007 Lufthansa Systems, the IT part of the group, has used solutions from Actian, like Ingres database and the OpenROAD platform, 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 started in Paris in 2017. On August 8, 2024, HCLSoftware said it would buy Zeenea for 24 million euros. Zeenea will stay independent under Actian, their data & analytics part.

Ownership

Lufthansa was owned by the government until 1994. Deutsche Lufthansa AG shares have been sold on German stock markets since 1966. They are also sold electronically using the Xetra system. It is a DAX index share and listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange’s Prime Standard. At the end of 2019, German investors owned 67.3% of the shares (72.1% the year before). The next biggest group, with 10.4%, was from Luxembourg. Investors from the US had 8.1%, followed by Ireland and the United Kingdom, each with 3.6%. This follows Germany’s Aviation Compliance Documentation Act (LuftNaSiG). As of the report date, 58% of shares were held by institutional investors (53% the year before), and 42% by private people (47% the year before). Lansdowne Partners International Ltd. and BlackRock, Inc. were the biggest shareholders at year-end, with 4.9% and 3.1% respectively. All deals that needed to be shared and published during 2019, plus updates every three months on who owns the shares, are online. During the 2020 COVID crisis Heinz Hermann Thiele bought more than 12% of the shares; he died a few months later. The free float for Lufthansa shares was 67% in 2020, as per the Deutsche Börse.

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, left-wing terrorists bombed the building. 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 leading to flight cancellations and big losses for the company. A big argument between Lufthansa and the pilots’ union ended after almost five years and 14 strikes in December 2017. Without counting the €9 billion help from the German government, Lufthansa cut 31,000 jobs during the COVID-19 years. In 2022 collective talks, verdi said Lufthansa’s wage offer would mean real wage cuts for workers and called for warning strikes by about 20,000 ground workers in Germany.

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. The 1970s retro design had the top half of the plane white and the bottom half grey/silver, with a blue band along the windows and a black nose. The crane logo was blue on the engines, the bottom half of the plane below the cockpit windows, and a yellow circle inside a blue band on the tail.

German designer Otl Aicher made a full design for the airline in 1967. The crane logo was always shown in a circle which, on the plane, was yellow on a blue tailfin. Helvetica was used as the main font for both the plane design and publications. The blue band and general paint scheme of the planes stayed from the earlier design.

Aicher’s design was kept in the 1988 design. The band along the windows was removed, and the plane was painted grey.

In 2018, Lufthansa changed its design. The circle with the crane stayed, but the background changed from yellow to dark blue. The vertical stabilizer and back part of the plane were dark blue, and the tail stayed white. The main part of the plane was all white, and the brand name “Lufthansa” was painted above the windows, also in dark blue.

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

Destinations

Main article: List of Lufthansa destinations

Lufthansa flies to many places in 2026, including trips 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]}

• Air Astana
• Airlink
• Azul Brazilian Airlines
• Air Transat
• KTX (Railway)
• Kuwait Airways
• Scoot
• Uzbekistan Airways

Codeshare agreements

Sister airlines

Lufthansa shares flights with these airlines in its group:

• Air Dolomiti
• Austrian Airlines
• Brussels Airlines
• Discover Airlines
• Edelweiss Air
• Eurowings
• ITA Airways
• Lufthansa City Airlines
• SunExpress
• Swiss International Air Lines

Other airlines

Lufthansa also shares flights with these other airlines:

• Aegean Airlines
• Air Astana
• Air Canada
• Air China
• Air India
• Air New Zealand
• airBaltic
• Airlink
• All Nippon Airways
• Asiana Airlines
• Avianca
• Azerbaijan Airlines
• Bangkok Airways
• Cathay Pacific
• Copa Airlines
• Croatia Airlines
• DAT
• Deutsche Bahn (railway)
• EgyptAir
• Ethiopian Airlines
• Etihad Airways
• KM Malta Airlines
• LATAM Airlines
• LATAM Colombia
• LOT Polish Airlines
• Luxair
• Oman Air
• Shenzhen Airlines
• Singapore Airlines
• South African Airways
• TAP Air Portugal
• Thai Airways International
• Turkish Airlines
• United Airlines
• Widerøe

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 changed their minds and only kept 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 decided to bring them back because people wanted to fly more international trips again. The airline brought back eight of these planes and started flying them again on routes to places like Boston, New York, Los Angeles, and Bangkok.

Lufthansa also has a tradition of naming its airplanes after cities. For example, some planes are named after German cities like Berlin, Hamburg, and Munich. They even named some 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, as well as through special credit cards and shop purchases. Status levels depend on points earned from flights, with higher levels offering extra benefits like lounge access.

Cabins

First Class

First Class is available on some large planes like the Airbus A340-600, Airbus A380, and Boeing 747-8. 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. Plans include adding new Premium Economy seats on future planes.

Bus service

Lufthansa started a bus service between Nuremberg Airport and Munich Airport in 2021, replacing short flights between the two cities. This service was also available in the late 1990s.

Customer issues

In May 2022, during a flight from New York to Frankfurt, some passengers did not follow rules about wearing masks. This led to a situation where many passengers who were clearly Jewish were not allowed to board their next flight to Budapest. Most of them were able to travel on other flights the same day. Later in August 2022, Lufthansa took steps to better prevent unfair treatment of people 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, though they denied any unfair treatment and said the problem was due to mistakes in communication.