Lufthansa to add 6 more flights from India

Premier German carrier Lufthansa on Wednesday announced enhancement of its weekly services from Delhi to Munich and Bangalore to Frankfurt, adding six more flights to take the total number of services to 38.

While the Delhi-Munich flights would operate daily from November 1 against the current four flights a week, the Bangalore-Frankfurt service would be enhanced from five to seven flights a week, airline's General Manager Werner Heesen said.    

Promising to "more than double" its frequencies by 2007, he said Lufthansa would operate 38 flights from October 1 and the number of services could go up to 46 by next year as per the rights granted in the recently concluded bilateral air traffic agreement between Germany and India.

He said the agreement, which reflected "a clear trend" towards an open-sky accord, would be reviewed at another meeting slated next year.

Lufthansa, which operates from five Indian cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad, is looking at more cities to expand its coverage of the country.

Stating that its buy-off of Swiss Air would be completely concluded by 2006, Heesen said Lufthansa would then start offering another destination of Zurich in Europe, besides Frankfurt and Munich, to fly passengers onwards to North America.

On its Memorandum of Understanding with Air-India, the Lufthansa official said talks on further expanding the MoU would be held next week and "explore wider areas".  The MoU already covers code share, frequent flyer programmes and joint marketing activities.