Lufthansa on Thursday announced the introduction of two new routes – Munich to Bengaluru and Frankfurt to Hyderabad.
Flights on the Munich-Bengaluru route will be operational three times a week, with the first flight scheduled on November 3, 2023. The Frankfurt-Hyderabad flights will also commence in the winter. These flights represent the first new routes in the Asia-Pacific for the Group.
He said the German airline will deploy the A350-900 on the Munich-Bengaluru route.
This expansion underlines Lufthansa’s long-term vision to strengthen its footprint in the Indian market by catering to the growing population of young working professionals. The brand intends to make the best of India’s untapped growth opportunity - especially in the post-COVID era - by providing consumers a premium travel experience.
“So the business is really back and this is really good to see. And we were also able to generate an operating profit of 1.5 billion euros, which was a little bit higher than we had expected,” Harry Hohmeister, Member of the Executive Board, Head of Global Markets & Network Lufthansa Group Airlines, said while addressing the media in New Delhi.
“We will do historically high investments in the next few years into new aircraft. So we have more than 200 aircraft on order to modernise the fleet,” he noted.
The airline is also ramping up its product to project itself as a premium airline, rather than a middle-class airline.
The Lufthansa Group’s tradition in India dates back nearly a century, and these new routes will strength its position as the leading European airline group on the subcontinent.
Currently, it operates daily from Delhi to Frankfurt, Munich and Zurich, Mumbai to Frankfurt, Munich and Zurich and Bengaluru to Frankfurt. It also operates a five times a week service from Chennai to Frankfurt.
He said, “We are doing this with a long-term vision to strengthen our footprint in the Indian market, which has massive growth potential in terms of air passenger traffic.”
The airline would like to be represented in the country’s maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) segment, said Hohmeister. “For us, of course, the focus is to have contractual business. Therefore, this is where we focus and some kind of partnership for different kinds of working together then the contractual question where, as I said, getting information from the public today, I think we first have to also understand the market,” he explained.
When asked if the expansion plans of Air India and IndiGo were a matter of concern for the the airline, he said that the aviation industry was growing rapidly and there was enough and more room for players to coexist and grow. Besides, according to Hohmeister, Air India is a partner through Star Alliance, and it is looking at deepening its ties with the Tata-owned airline, he said.
On the sidelines of the event, Hohmeister told businessline that the airline’s cargo segment from India was also growing.