Of European carriers, Lufthansa is one of the more impressive when it comes to U.S. destinations offered. You can fly nonstop to Germany with their flag carrier from a good number of U.S. airports. If you count all the other airlines within Lufthansa Group, their parent company, they offer a lot of capacity across the Atlantic. But I am still surprised to see Lufthansa Group adding seven new U.S. routes.
The Lufthansa Group includes the German flag carrier, SWISS, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, and Eurowings. All (except Eurowings) are members of the Star Alliance. Most airports that they serve in the U.S. are United hubs, but there are also a good number that aren’t, including some of the new additions. Here are the seven new routes:
- Lufthansa – Munich to Seattle six days per week
- Lufthansa – Munich to Detroit five days per week
- Eurowings – Munich to Orlando three days per week
- Eurowings – Munich to Las Vegas two days per week
- Eurowings – Frankfurt to Phoenix five days per week
- Eurowings – Frankfurt to Anchorage three days per week
- SWISS – Zurich to Washington Dulles (announced last week)
All of this new service will pick up in summer 2020.
Lufthansa adding more Seattle capacity isn’t too surprising. Detroit is a little more so, as it is a Delta hub. Lufthansa already flies there from Frankfurt, so Munich is both a new nonstop option and a new connection point for onward travelers. Both German cities are Lufthansa main hubs.
Eurowings? Anchorage?
The most surprising move here is that Lufthansa Group is adding significant Eurowings long-haul capacity. I am not aware of any existing Eurowings long-haul flights to the U.S. besides Dusseldorf – NYC. The addition of four destinations from Frankfurt is quite surprising.
The one that really stands out is Frankfurt – Anchorage. Some might find that insane. How could this possibly be profitable?? However, you may or may not realize that there is already a flight from Frankfurt to Whitehorse, Yukon on Condor, with seasonal summer service. Apparently it’s a very popular German tourist destination. I would imagine that Alaska is as well, and seasonal service on Eurowings will probably do fine.
What do you think of Lufthansa Group’s new routes?
MUC-DTW caters to the auto industry, much like DL’s DTW-NGO flights do. Surprising
to me is that the only new service touching a US Star hub is ZRH-IAD.
Interesting. I had no idea there was a flight to Nagoya from DTW! It did surprise me, too, how none of the LH/EW routes focused on *A hubs.