Today, Lufthansa is celebrating half a century of flights to Asia and has established itself as Europe's leading airline to the continent. "We carry more than five million passengers between Asia and Europe with 18,000 flights a year. Our network comprises 23 destinations served by 225 flights every week. We are the only airline to land at Pusan in Korea, Nanjing and Shenyang in China and Pune in India", says Uwe Müller, Vice President Asia Pacific for Lufthansa.
According to Uwe Müller, Lufthansa's strength in the region lies in its ability to offer its dense Asian network from 120 European cities via its two hubs of Frankfurt and Munich. Lufthansa will continue to concentrate its long-haul services from these two hubs, while increasing the number of routes served from Munich. Lufthansa's traffic in Asia has held up well in this year of crisis, including in the most affected markets such as Japan and Korea. "The average load factor is 80 %", says Uwe Müller. The airline plans to increase capacity on its Asian network in 2010, notably with the introduction of the Airbus A380. "We are expecting the arrival of five Airbus A380s by the middle of next year, and Asia is definitely one of our service options," says Uwe Müller.
