Frankfurt
Deutsche Lufthansa is banking on Airbus Group’s latest A350 wide-body jet to shore up its Munich hub, where the deployment of less efficient planes means normally lucrative long-haul flights are losing money. The first 15 of 25 A350s ordered by Lufthansa are to be based in the Bavarian city, with the composite-fuselage, twin-engine model providing a 25 per cent fuel saving compared with the four-turbine Airbus A340s currently used there. “The new A350 fleet is a big step toward profitability,” Wilken Bormann, who heads Lufthansa’s operations in Munich, said in an interview. Two A350s are now flying from the secondary hub, with the third delivered Saturday, and the number is set to reach six this year and 12 by the end of 2018, he said.
