Lufthansa Group orders 59 wide-body Boeing 777-9X and Airbus A350-900 aircraft

Following a recommendation by the Deutsche Lufthansa AG Executive Board headed by Dr Christoph Franz, the Supervisory Board approved the purchase of 59 ultra-modern aircraft for the Group at its meeting on September 18th. 34 Boeing 777-9Xs and 25 Airbus A350-900s will be added to the Lufthansa Group’s wide-body fleet. The first of these new aircraft will be delivered as early as 2016. Older Boeing 747-400s and Airbus A340-300s will be phased out by 2025. The new aeroplanes will primarily serve to replace existing aircraft at Lufthansa. The investment amount for the Lufthansa Group’s latest order totals €14bn at list prices and is the largest single private-sector investment in the history of German industry. The new aircraft will be operated by ultra-modern, powerful, low-noise engines – the Airbus A350 by the Rolls-Royce ‘Trent XWB 84’ engine and the Boeing 777-9X by General Electric’s ‘GE-9X’ model. The noise footprint of the new models will be at least 30% lower than today’s aircraft. “This investment will safeguard about 13,000 jobs at Lufthansa alone as well as thousands of jobs at our partners in aviation and other suppliers”, said Christoph Franz, Chairman of the Executive Board and CEO of the Lufthansa Group, explaining the macroeconomic significance of the investment at a press conference in Frankfurt. This investment in new technology, efficiency and customer comfort is a continuation of the ongoing fleet modernisation that is taking place at the Group’s airlines. Lufthansa operates a wide-body fleet of around 107 aircraft, among them ten ultra-modern Airbus A380s and nine Boeing 747-8s as well as the Airbus A330-300 (18 aircraft). The fleet also includes Airbus A340s (48) and Boeing 747-400s (22). In addition to these, the Group subsidiary Swiss has 31 wide-body aeroplanes, while Austrian Airlines’ wide-body fleet consists of 12 aircraft.