A total of additional 170 tonnes of capacity will be available each week to Lufthansa Cargo customers on Lagos-Frankfurt route from September as the airline said it is further integrating Lagos into its network through twice-weekly freighter flights.
With this development, an MD-11 freighter is scheduled to take off from Frankfurt to Lagos from September 15, 2014.
According to the airline’s management, Lagos is an important destination for the oil and gas industry which urgently requires spare parts and equipment for oil production facilities, adding that with this new development, they can now be transported even faster to Nigeria and with greater flexibility.
Following a brief stop, the freighter will fly on to Johannesburg. The return leg to Frankfurt will include a stopover in Nairobi while another two weekly flights from Frankfurt to Johannesburg will also stop in Nairobi on the southbound flight.
“Adding Lagos to our freighter network considerably strengthens our involvement in West Africa,” Carsten Wirths, vice president, Europe & Africa at Lufthansa Cargo, said. In Nigeria alone, Lufthansa Cargo offers freight capacity on board Lufthansa Passenger Airlines flights to three destinations.
Besides Lagos, Lufthansa also flies to Port Harcourt and Abuja with an Airbus A330 while Accra, Malabo and Luanda are further destinations in West Africa.
Deutsche Lufthansa AG is an Aviation Group comprising nearly 500 subsidiaries and affiliates. Headquartered in Germany, the Group operates in five business segments – passenger transportation (Passenger Airline Group), logistics, Maintenance, Repair and Overhail, catering and IT-services.
The airlines engaged in the passenger transportation business are Lufthansa German Airlines (including Lufthansa Regional), Austrian Airlines, SWISS and Germanwings as well as stakeholdings in Brussels Airlines, JetBlue und SunExpress.
In the 2013 business year, the airlines in the Lufthansa Group welcomed more than 104 million passengers on board their flights, making it Europe’s leading airline grouping.
Operating through the Frankfurt, Munich, Vienna, Zurich and Brussels hubs, Lufthansa, SWISS, Austrian Airlines and Brussels Airlines jointly serve 274 destinations in 106 countries on four continents.
The Group fleet currently consists of 622 aircraft – on order are another 295 new aircraft, valued at a total of about 36bn euros at list price and scheduled for delivery until 2025.
With its ongoing expenditure in fleet renewal, the Group is consistently making the fleet more cost-efficient and its operations more environment-friendly.
In March 2014 the Lufthansa Group employed around 118,000 people. In the 2013 business year, it generated revenues totalling 30bn euros.
Sade Williams
