Company Watch - Lufthansa.

Oct 23, 2006

Lufthansa To Wait For A350 Detail Before Order. Lufthansa chief executive Wolfgang Mayrhuber said he would wait for more information on Airbus's planned A350 XWB mid-sized aircraft before making a decision on renewing its long-haul fleet. Lufthansa last month announced it was buying 30 Airbus A320-family aircraft with options for 30 more, as well as 5 A330s to offset delays to the A380 superjumbo, of which it has ordered 15. The carrier said then it would make a decision on further long-haul aircraft before the end of the year. Oct 19, 2006

Lufthansa wants to weigh up the A350 against Boeing's 787 Dreamliner, which is set to enter service in 2008, at least 4 years ahead of the rival Airbus model should it go ahead. Lufthansa is Europe's second-biggest airline. Oct 19, 2006

Lufthansa officially signed the order for 35 Airbus aircraft it announced last month. The order is valued at more than $3 billion and is for five A330-300s, five A319s, 10 A320s and 15 A321s with options for 30 additional A320 family aircraft. Engine selections have not been made. Deliveries will begin next year, with all five A330s delivered by the end of 2008 to bring the airline's overall A330-300 fleet to 15. LH previously said that the A330s will help it maintain growth projections despite delays to the A380, of which it has 15 on firm order. Oct 16, 2006

Lufthansa said it will recruit 500 flight attendants and 250 staff for check-in and other ground services in Munich. "We see at our Munich hub a higher growth rate than we expected in earlier plans. We need more staff for ground and air services urgently," Munich Hub Manager Karl Ulrich Garnadt said. The airline said that 2.2 million passengers used the hub in September, an increase of 10% over the year-ago month. Oct 20, 2006

Lufthansa is refining its hub management strategy. From Jan. 1 it will transfer network management tasks and processes to its hubs. According to LH staff magazine Lufthanseat, the process will begin with the winter schedule as short- and medium-haul aircraft are firmly assigned to the Frankfurt and Munich hubs or to a non-hub area on the basis of their tail number. Aircraft may be reassigned at the base for economic or operational reasons but will not be transferred to another hub. With the 2007 summer schedule, long-haul aircraft will be assigned on the same principle. LH is expecting more planning stability and wants to create a foundation for the transfer of greater operational and entrepreneurial responsibility to individual hubs. Oct 16, 2006

Lufthansa Flight Training opened a new simulator center in Vienna that initially will accommodate one CAE A320 FFS. A second simulator--either another A320, a 737 or a 767--will be introduced by next summer depending on demand, LFT said. Eventually, four simulators will be housed at Lufthansa Flight Training Vienna, which will be used mainly by Austrian Airlines pilots. Austrian is LFT's biggest customer after LH. Oct 20, 2006

Editor: Aram Gesar, eMail: [e-mail]

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Oct 16, 2006