Christian Schindler, Lufthansa’s General Manager UK & Ireland, visited Dublin yesterday to celebrate the airline’s 40 years of flights from Ireland this month – having commenced two B737 flights a week via Manchester to Frankfurt on 1st April 1972. He announced that Lufthansa had achieved 19% growth last year to almost 300,000 passengers ex-Dublin and that figures for March 2012 showed almost 21% growth on March 2011.
“Around 78% of our passengers from Dublin to Frankfurt take advantage of our quick and easy onward connections and low-cost prices to 200+ destinations. For example, we have excellent connections to Scandinavia and the most popular onward destination is Lagos.”
Christian presented Cormac O’Connell, Head of Aviation Business Development, Dublin Airport Authority, with a model of the new Boeing 747-8 – the longest passenger aircraft in the world and which Lufthansa will become the first airline to operate later this year.
Cormac said that Lufthansa is now the sixth biggest airline at Dublin Airport, with three daily A321 non-stop flights to Frankfurt and summer services to Munich and Dusseldorf (commencing 6th May), as well as a Knock – Dusseldorf service from 5th May until 29th September.
“Cork and Shannon would also welcome Lufthansa traffic,” he added, “as there is much tourist demand to visit the West of Ireland, and I would also encourage Lufthansa to look at serving more German cities from Dublin.”
