Airbus Delivers 600th Lufthansa Plane at Hamburg-Finkenwerder

Since 1976, Lufthansa has taken supply of an Airbus plane a mean of each month – 600 of them in nearly 50 years

The supply to Lufthansa of its first Airbus A300B2 on February 9, 1976 laid the inspiration for a robust partnership inside European civil aviation that has now prolonged nearly 50 years.

With greater than ten totally different Airbus plane varieties provided since then to nearly each air operator within the Lufthansa Group, as we speak noticed the 600th such plane – an Airbus A321neo – handed over to Lufthansa in a proper ceremony at Airbus’s Hamburg-Finkenwerder website.

Carsten Spohr, Chairman of the Lufthansa Group Government Board:

“Lufthansa and Airbus are united by a really particular partnership. Ever since Airbus’s creation, we’ve got loved shut and trusting collaborations on a variety of analysis initiatives and new developments. Lufthansa has additionally served no fewer than 4 occasions as Airbus’s launching buyer for a brand new plane kind, most not too long ago for the A320neo household that’s proving so successful. Lufthansa has ordered each household of plane that Airbus has developed over the previous 5 many years. And greater than 90 % of the 600 Airbuses that we’ve got taken supply of throughout that point are nonetheless in Lufthansa Group service as we speak. We additionally want to welcome our 700th Airbus to our fleet as a part of Lufthansa’s centennial celebrations in 2026.”

Guillaume Faury, Airbus CEO:

“Lufthansa and Airbus have been companions ever since we delivered the primary Lufthansa A300 again in February 1976. Since then, Lufthansa has taken supply of an Airbus plane a mean of each month – 600 of them in nearly 50 years! No different airline group has obtained extra of our plane thus far. My specific thanks, on behalf of everybody at Airbus, go to all of the groups at Lufthansa for all their confidence and belief. We look ahead to the subsequent 50 years of our partnership and our shared dedication to the purpose of sustainable air journey.”

The story thus far

Lufthansa signed its first buy settlement with Airbus for 3 A300B2s in 1975 and obtained its first such plane from Europe’s new producer seven months in a while February 9, 1976. Subsequent years noticed the primary deliveries of additional Airbus varieties: the A310 in 1983, adopted by the A300-600 in 1987. The primary Airbus A320 to affix the Lufthansa fleet was delivered in October 1989. Over 370 plane of the A320 household are in service as we speak with the varied airways of the Lufthansa Group. The primary A340 adopted in 1993; and only one 12 months later the Lufthansa Airbus fleet handed the 100-aircraft mark. The A330 adopted in 2004; and in 2010 the A380 – the world’s largest passenger plane – joined the Lufthansa long-haul fleet.

Lufthansa has additionally served as launching buyer for a brand new Airbus kind on 4 events thus far: for the A310, the A340, the A220 and – in 2016 –A320neo. Not solely the Airbus A320 household is a cornerstone of as we speak’s Lufthansa fleet: the A350-900, which first arrived in 2016, has additionally develop into a key element within the Lufthansa long-haul fleet, and the Lufthansa Group is the world’s third-biggest A350 buyer.

600th Airbus named ‘Münster’

The 600th Airbus plane to be delivered to Lufthansa, which bears the registration D-AIEQ, is an Airbus A321neo. Seating 215 passengers, the A321neo is a state-of-the-art and fuel-efficient short- and medium-haul twinjet that has been in Lufthansa service since 2019. D-AIEQ has been named ‘Münster’ after the German metropolis.

Companions in sustainability, too

Lufthansa and Airbus connect specific significance to their collaborations on the sustainability and the analysis & improvement fronts. Over the past three many years, the Lufthansa Group has geared up a number of of its long-haul Airbus plane with devices to conduct local weather and climate analysis. Along with three such Airbus jets which might be presently gathering climate-related knowledge for scientific functions, Lufthansa can be working with the Karlsruhe Institute of Expertise on a world-first challenge to transform a Lufthansa Airbus A350-900 right into a analysis plane.

Lufthansa carried out its longest continuous flight thus far in 2021 when it flew one among its Airbus A350-900s from Hamburg to Mount Nice on the Falkland Islands on behalf of the Alfred Wegener Institute. The identical 12 months additionally noticed a Lufthansa A350-900 transformed right into a local weather analysis plane for the CARIBIC Challenge.

Again in 2011 Lufthansa was the primary airline to trial biofuel in its each day flight operations. For some six months, a Lufthansa Airbus A321 was operated on the Hamburg-Frankfurt route with one among its two engines powered with a gas mix consisting 50% of biosynthetic kerosene. In the identical 12 months Lufthansa teamed up with the Forschungszentrum Jülich to conduct a brand new kind of long-term local weather analysis research utilizing scheduled air providers to observe the Earth’s environment. As a part of this IAGOS analysis challenge, specifically developed devices had been put in aboard a Lufthansa Airbus A340-300 to gather hint parts from the environment in the middle of the plane’s common flight operations.