Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Lufthansa A380 loses to Emirates at Mumbai again

Just what is going on at Mumbai airport? I ask because, yet again, Lufthansa appears to have lost out in its bid to launch A380 service to this major Indian city.

As we reported recently, Lufthansa was intending to launch A380 flights to Mumbai from the start of the winter timetable on October 26.

At the same time, Emirates would "downgrade" its existing A380 service to a more modest B777-300ER.

But in a change of tack, Mumbai appears to have reversed its decison. Emirates will now continue its daily A380 flight throughout the winter while Lufthansa will still operate its B747-400 on the route, reports the Times of India. When Business Traveller checked both airlines’ schedules we found the latter had been revised.

Why the change? Neither airline(s) nor airport will provide comment to UK media at the time of writing. But it appears the airport is favouring Emirates over Lufthansa.

In which case, this would be considered unprecedented as major international airports are not supposed to show any favouritism to foreign carriers.

And it's not the first time this has happened to Lufthansa at Mumbai. Earlier this summer, for example, Lufthansa announced it would upgrade its daily Mumbai flight from a B747-400 to a more modern B747-8.
15/09/14 Business Traveller
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