Lufthansa will operate a daily A380 service to Hong Kong this winter.
The superjumbo will replace the B747-8 that currently plies the route on October 25.
Flight LH796 departs Frankfurt at 2215 to arrive into Hong Kong at 1655 the next day. After a six hour layover, return flight LH797 leaves Hong Kong at 2310 and lands in Frankfurt at 0530 the following morning.
These departure and arrival times at Frankfurt afford excellent connections to many, if not most, European cities.
But Hong Kong's gain is at the expense of both Johannesburg and Mumbai.
Johannesburg's current A380 service will be replaced by a B747-8 with fewer seats. This seems a strange decision, considering that travel between Europe and South Africa peaks in the (European) winter months.
Mumbai's planned A380 service by Lufthansa will be postponed yet again — superjumbo flights were proposed in the past and were finally set to launch this coming October.
Mumbai has only a single A380 gate and the arrival and departure times proposed by Lufthansa clash with those of Emirates. The latter got there first and took the slot timings (see news, September 2014).
In other news, Lufthansa will re-schedule its daily Cape Town to Munich service, operated by an A340-600, in the winter to operate during daytime hours.
Some readers have said they prefer daytime travel when returning from South Africa to Europe. The Lufthansa schedules will see a departure from Cape Town at 0925 and an arrival into Munich at 1950.
In the evening, there are connections available at Munich to quite a number of major European cities. Besides domestic points, these include London Heathrow, Manchester, Paris CDG, Milan Malpensa, Zurich and Geneva.
Alex McWhirter
