September 1 marked the launch of Lufthansa's third Airbus A380, which departed from Frankfurt for Beijing at 5:20 p.m. The aircraft, Peking, was delivered to the airline just one week ago. The return flight left this morning at 10:30 a.m. For now, the A380 will serve Beijing once a week, but the airline plans to increase the frequency of this service.
Beijing is Lufthansa's second A380 route, following its flights to Tokyo. On September 12, Lufthansa will launch flights to Johannesburg, which will be served twice weekly on Thursdays and Sundays.
Martin Riecken, Lufthansa's director head of corporate communications for the Americas, told Travel Agent that, as the company gets more A380 planes, he is "confident" that they will see some North American routes. "The most obvious on the shortlist are JFK, but also San Francisco and Los Angeles, Miami and Chicago." All of these flights would be from Frankfurt, he added, where all of the airline's A380s are based.
The planes, he added, will be reserved for inter-continental travel, meaning that Lufthansa flights within Europe will use smaller planes. "We purchased these planes for long-haul, high-capacity routes," he said.
Visit www.lufthansa.com/a380.