Lufthansa Group orders Boeing 787s and Airbus A350s

The Lufthansa Group has placed an order valued at $12 billion at list prices, for 20 Boeing 787-9 and 20 Airbus A350-900’s. Delivery of aircraft against the newly placed order is scheduled for the period 2022 and 2027. The new aircraft will replace primarily aircraft of the Lufthansa Group which would include the four-engine Airbus A340 airliners of Lufthansa and Swiss as also the Boeing 747-400s of Lufthansa. The distribution of the aircraft amongst the group’s airlines will be announced at a later date. Lufthansa has sold six of its 14 Airbus A380s back to Airbus. The aircraft will retire from the airline’s fleet in 2022 and 2023.

As per a statement by the airline, Lufthansa continuously monitors the profitability of its worldwide route network. As a consequence, the group is reducing the size of its Airbus A380 fleet from 14 aircraft to eight for financial reasons. The structure of the network and the long-haul fleet, fundamentally optimised according to strategic aspects, will give the company more flexibility and at the same time, increase its efficiency and competitiveness. This will of course also benefit Lufthansa’s customers. It will be interesting to see if Airbus has already planned homes for these aircraft with British Airways rumoured to be interested in used Airbus A380s or was this just a compromise by the manufacturer to secure the future Airbus A350 order.