Lufthansa is bringing back five of its gas-guzzling Airbus A340-600 aircraft from deep storage to serve key routes from its Munich hub because passenger demand for a First Class cabin has flooded back and the airline doesn’t have any other plane based in Munich that serves their needs.
The German flag carrier grounded its fleet of A340-600’s at the height of the pandemic last year and for a while, it looked like the airline intended to permanently retire its 17 strong fleet without another passenger ever stepping foot onboard one of the quad-engined aircraft again.
Lufthansa now says it will press ahead with the sale of 12 of the aircraft but temporarily keep the remaining five in order to serve markets where First Class is in demand. Each jet has eight seats in First Class, along with a Business Class, Premium Economy and Economy Class cabins.
Unfortunately, it’s going to take Lufthansa quite some time to get the planes reactivated and the airline doesn’t expect them to be serving routes from Munich to North America and Asia until Summer 2022.
And by late 2023, Lufthansa has confirmed a badly kept secret that it will install a First Class cabin on new Airbus A350-900 which will also be based in Munich.
Announcing the plans on Friday, Lufthansa wasn’t able to provide any further details of the new A350 First Class cabin or confirm how many aircraft will eventually feature the cabin.
