Another Record Year for Lufthansa at Birmingham
2014 was another record breaking year for Lufthansa in the Midlands with over 482,000 passengers travelling in and out of Birmingham – a like for like increase of almost seven per cent on 2013.
The figures also show that almost 60 per cent of Lufthansa passengers leaving Birmingham take advantage of the quick and easy onward connections to the airline’s worldwide network through their Frankfurt and Munich hubs.
Announcing the figures Christian Schindler, Lufthansa’s Regional Director UK, Ireland & Iceland, said: “Birmingham has continued to shine as a key market for Lufthansa within our network. The demand for our services has continued to grow and we have been able to increase capacity accordingly.
“The figures prove once again that discerning travellers appreciate the way Lufthansa has responded to the challenges of the travel market in the face of ever-increasing competition from low-cost airlines. To maintain the leading position in our market we must be better than anyone else in terms of reliability and innovation at a competitive price.
"This is why Lufthansa continually reviews pricing on its routes to Frankfurt and Munich. In addition, the latest figures show Lufthansa has recorded the best figures for punctuality in its history with over 85% of all flights leaving Frankfurt and Munich within 15 minutes of scheduled departure time and we continue to enhance the on-board experience for customers. The large number of Birmingham passengers who take onward connections can now have the added option of our high quality premium economy product on our long-haul services.
"We are also fitting 20 Airbus A321s with a revolutionary in-flight entertainment programme developed by Lufthansa Systems. This enables passengers to connect their own laptop, tablet or smartphone via Wi-Fi to the in-flight infotainment service offering a wide range of films, TV series, music, games and flight information. Before the flight, passengers simply download the Lufthansa entertainment app or the Microsoft Silverlight browser plug-in for notebooks for free - like the whole program itself - at http://LH.com/entertainment-app-en
“Our passengers know that when they book with Lufthansa they are guaranteed to receive our high quality on-board services with no hidden extra costs. And we will continue to offer our Birmingham passengers the shortest possible onward connection times to our worldwide network through our hubs of Frankfurt and Munich.”
In 2014 the most popular onward destinations for Lufthansa’s Birmingham travellers included Vienna, Prague, Istanbul, Johannesburg, Budapest, Moscow, Graz, Hong Kong, Beijing and Tokyo.
Overall, the full service airlines in the Lufthansa Group (Lufthansa, SWISS and Brussels Airlines) continue to be among the leading carriers at Birmingham having carried a combined total of more than 708,000 passengers in and out of Birmingham last year.