Exclusive | Lufthansa rides Hong Kong travel recovery and will restore flights to pre-pandemic levels, but mainland China services still lag
- With ‘strong bookings’ for the rest of the year, German airline to resume Munich flights from next March
- Flights to mainland China slow to recover, hovering at 43 per cent of what they were before Covid-19
Europe’s largest airline, Lufthansa, will restore the number of flights to Hong Kong to pre-pandemic levels from the second quarter of next year, in another sign of the city’s path to recovery.
But the German airline’s services to mainland China still lagged, hovering at 43 per cent of the level before Covid-19 struck in 2020.
Frank Naeve, Lufthansa Group’s senior vice-president of global markets and stations, told the Post Hong Kong had long been an important market for both passengers and cargo, and he was pleased to see the city’s aviation market rebound.
Before the pandemic, Lufthansa and its sister carrier Swiss International Air Lines operated about 21 flights a week to Hong Kong from Munich, Frankfurt and Zurich.
Swiss International will add one more flight from Zurich to Hong Kong from October 29, making it a daily service.
Lufthansa currently flies once a day from Hong Kong to Frankfurt and Naeve said bookings were “strong” for the last three months of the year.
From March, the airline will resume its service to Munich for the first time in four years, with the current plan to start with three flights a week and then increasing to daily flights, which would bring the total number to Hong Kong back to pre-pandemic levels.