Lufthansa’s South Indian Agenda

Vyas Sivanand - Bangalore

Lufthansa is examining the possibility of operating flights to more cities in the south. Presently, it is evaluating the situation of flying to another point in the south, possibly Hyderabad, although a decision has not yet been taken. The market survey is being done right now. Officials said that the new flight to another destination in the south would be from Frankfurt and not Munich. Lufthansa currently operates five flights from Bangalore to Frankfurt (three scheduled and two additional flights). Currently Lufthansa operates a total of 12 weekly service to/from southern India that is made up of daily Chennai-Frankfurt scheduled services and five weekly Bangalore-Frankfurt flights (three scheduled and two additional flights).

"We are looking forward to increasing our flight services from the existing four gateways: New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore and adding more flights beyond the three currently from New Delhi to our second state-of-the-art hub Munich. We expect the current flights between New Delhi and Munich to be a big draw because of the luxury afforded by our new business class product offered on all our Munich bound flights after June 9, 2004," said Werner Heesen, general manager - passenger sales and director South Asia.

"The new business class product offers the nicest bed cum entertainment centre in commercial civil aviation, much improved circulation areas and wonderfully attentive service. The new business class product developed with German meticulousness over a period of two-and-a-half years and at an expense of around 300 million euros, will definitely attract the business travellers from India," adds Heesen.