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The Lufthansa Fleet – A Complex Structure of Divisions

Lufthansa is one of the largest airlines in Europe and one of the biggest players worldwide. The airline has a big operation that spans across two hubs, connecting a vast destination network across Europe and the world. Therefore, the airline and its divisions need a substantial number of planes to power the operation day after day. In this post I’ll be looking only at the Lufthansa branded airlines and not the wider LH Group. Each airline of the group will have its own fleet analysis.

The Lufthansa Fleet Split in Its Divisions

When we look at Lufthansa’s fleet we necessarily need to split it in three:

Lufthansa adopted this fragmented structure for multiple reasons. Mainly because it allows to streamline operations within the divisions and allows for different contracts to be stipulated between the main fleet and the rest. Kind of what is common place in the US with regional airlines like Envoy or Piedmont Airlines.

The Lufthansa Main Fleet – Powering The Flashier Routes

The LH main fleet is comprised of over 260 aircraft, making it one of the largest in Europe. Most of these planes are narrow bodies which serve the extensive European network. These smaller planes are key to the whole Lufthansa operations as they feed traffic from across the continent to the long-haul flights derparting from Frankfurt and Munich.

The narrow body fleet is mainly comprised of Airbus planes. Currently no single aisle Boeing planes are present in the fleet. That will change though over time, as the airline has placed an order for Boeing 737 MAX planes.

Narrow Body Fleet

  • 23 A319-100
  • 30 A320neo
  • 50 A320-200
  • 17 A321neo
  • 16 A321-100
  • 35 A321-200
  • 6 CRJ-1000

The number of active A320neo family planes does vary from month to month though. Lufthansa is, in fact, among those airlines affected by the Pratt & Whitney GTF engine issues. Therefore, many of its Airbus neo planes need to undergo maintennance while grounded for extended periods.

Wide Body Fleet

  • 9 A330-300
  • 17 A340-300
  • 10 A340-600
  • 26 A350-900
  • 6 A380-800
  • 7 Boeing 747-400
  • 19 Boeing 747-8
  • 5 Boeing 787-9

Lufthansa is one of the few airlines in Europe still to fly regularly the 747-400 series. These planes are quite rare to come across these days as they are being replaced with more fuel efficient twin engine jets.

The airline also owns a larger number of A380s than the one listed. However covid accelerated the airline retiring the type. Only a handful will return to service in the coming months to cope with rising traffic volumes.

The Lufthansa Fleet in 2023

The Lufthansa CityLine Fleet – For Regional Flight Operations

Lufthansa much alike American carriers has a regional division called CityLine. CityLine is a division designed to operate regional short-range flights. Many of these flights are within Germany or to neighbouring regions, or flights to low demand smaller secondary airfields.

Lufthansa CityLine operates a fleet of 49 airplanes supplied by 3 distinct manufacturers:

  • 12 Airbus A319-100
  • 2 Airbus A320neo
  • 4 Airbus A321-200
  • 28 CRJ 900
  • 2 Embraer 190

Although it’s a fleet with a pretty regional footprint, there are no turboprops present in it.

Lufthansa CityLiner Fleet of CRJ900 on takeoff

The Newest Addition – City Airlines

This is quite confusing, I know. City Airlines sound a lot like CityLine and it also operates a very similar operations model. The new airline is mainly focused on serving European secondary cities and feed traffic into Munich airport. At the moment it has a rather small fleet of only 5 planes:

  • 4 A319-100
  • 1 A320neo

The Cargo Fleet

Let’s wrap things up with the LH cargo division’s fleet. It’s not a big fleet, only two aircraft types, however it has a peculiarity about it. That being the fact that Lufthansa flies 2 A321-200 freighters. These were transformed from passenger operations to freight. The complete cargo fleet comprises of:

  • 11 Boeing 777F
  • 2 Airbus A321-200