Lufthansa and Airbus have marked delivery of the 600th Lufthansa aircraft at Airbus’s Hamburg-Finkenwerder site.

Lufthansa Group has received more Airbus aircraft than any other customer worldwide. The carrier is a four-time launch customer and the third-biggest A350 customer. The 600th Lufthansa aircraft was formally named ‘Münster’.

Lufthansa and Airbus

The delivery to Lufthansa of its first Airbus A300B2 on February 9, 1976 laid the foundation for a strong partnership within European civil aviation that has now extended almost 50 years. With more than ten different Airbus aircraft types supplied since then to almost every air operator in the Lufthansa Group, today saw the 600th such aircraft – an Airbus A321neo – handed over to Lufthansa in a formal ceremony at Airbus’s Hamburg-Finkenwerder site.

Carsten Spohr, Chairman of the Lufthansa Group Executive Board, said: “Lufthansa and Airbus are united by a very special partnership. Ever since Airbus’s creation, we have enjoyed close and trusting collaborations on a wide range of research projects and new developments. Lufthansa has also served no fewer than four times as Airbus’s launching customer for a new aircraft type, most recently for the A320neo family that is proving such a success. Lufthansa has ordered every family of aircraft that Airbus has developed over the past five decades. And more than 90 per cent of the 600 Airbuses that we have taken delivery of during that time are still in Lufthansa Group service today. We also wish to welcome our 700th Airbus to our fleet as part of Lufthansa’s centennial celebrations in 2026.”

Guillaume Faury, Airbus CEO, said: “Lufthansa and Airbus have been partners ever since we delivered the first Lufthansa A300 back in February 1976. Since then, Lufthansa has taken delivery of an Airbus aircraft an average of every month – 600 of them in almost 50 years! No other airline group has received more of our aircraft to date. My particular thanks, on behalf of everyone at Airbus, go to all the teams at Lufthansa for all their confidence and trust. We look forward to the next 50 years of our partnership and our shared commitment to the goal of sustainable air travel.”

The story to date

Lufthansa signed its first purchase agreement with Airbus for three A300B2s in 1975 and received its first such aircraft from Europe’s new manufacturer seven months later on February 9, 1976. Subsequent years saw the first deliveries of further Airbus types: the A310 in 1983, followed by the A300-600 in 1987.

The first Airbus A320 to join the Lufthansa fleet was delivered in October 1989. Over 370 aircraft of the A320 family are in service today with the various airlines of the Lufthansa Group. The first A340 followed in 1993; and just one year later the Lufthansa Airbus fleet passed the 100-aircraft mark. The A330 followed in 2004; and in 2010 the A380 – the world’s largest passenger aircraft – joined the Lufthansa long-haul fleet.

Lufthansa has also served as launching customer for a new Airbus type on four occasions to date: for the A310, the A340, the A220 and – in 2016 –A320neo. Not only the Airbus A320 family is a cornerstone of today’s Lufthansa fleet: the A350-900, which first arrived in 2016, has also become a key component in the Lufthansa long-haul fleet, and the Lufthansa Group is the world’s third-biggest A350 customer.
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