Bucharest-Berlin flights will run four times a week, starting on June 3, 2012, on Airbus 320 and 319 aircraft no older than two years.
Lufthansa, together with its low-cost subsidiary Germanwings, will become the only airlines with direct flights between Bucharest and Berlin. The company chose Bucharest instead of another city in the region because it sees great potential for traffic between the two cities, said Ofer Kisch, Lufthansa general manager for CEE.
Lufthansa and Germanwings will not be in competition on the Bucharest-Berlin route, because clients will be able to buy one flight on Lufthansa and the other on the low-cost airline, on the same ticket.
Kisch said Lufthansa carried 20% more passengers in Romania in the first nine months compared with the same period last year.
In 2010, the company carried 650,000 passengers in Romania, while the group (including Germanwings, Austrian Airlines and Swiss Air) transported more than one million. About half of passengers remain at their destination, 25% take connecting flights to other European destinations, while the rest fly to other parts of the world.
In Romania, the Lufthansa group has more than 100 weekly flights off airports in Bucharest (Otopeni), Timisoara, Sibiu, Cluj-Napoca and Iasi. The most popular destinations are Munich and Frankfurt. According to its own data, the group’s market share in Romania is 23%.