The Hindu Business Line : Lufthansa begins Pune-Frankfurt services

Pune, July 2 Lufthansa has commenced its new non-stop services between Pune and Frankfurt with the arrival of its flight at the Pune International Airport on Wednesday.

Talking to presspersons, Mr Werner Heesen, Director (South Asia), Lufthansa, said this is the seventh destination in the country which has direct flights to Frankfurt. The others are from New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Kolkata. He said the Pune-Frankfurt flight would fly out from Pune six days a week, barring Sunday. The flight from Lufthansa to Pune would not be available on Saturday. AirbusA319 has 48 seats in an all-business class configuration. Mr Heesen noted that for now, the company was not looking at economy class from Pune.

Answering a question about the cargo handling from Pune, he noted that the Airbus 319 did not have the capacity as there were extended tanks for carrying fuel. He, however, noted that as soon as the runway at the Pune International Airport was ready, it would be looking at more options for the city.

City points

Mr Werner said Pune is home to many international firms in the IT, biotechology, biochemistry and automotive segments. It is also a medical tourism destination, targetting overseas patients, including those from Europe. The roundtrip from Pune to Frankfurt would be Rs 95,000 and to the US would be Rs 1,29,000.

More flights

Mr Werner said with the addition of these flights, Lufthansa would offer 55 flights per week from India via the seven gateways. He noted that Hyderabad, which currently has three flights, would come into the daily category soon and by end of October, the Mumbai-Munich sector which started in May 2008 with three flights would also become a daily service.

Other than Frankfurt, Munich and Zurich are the other European locations where Lufthansa caters to from the domestic market.

Two more flights to Frankfurt would begin from Kolkata; currently it is three weekly non-stop flights to Frankfurt. The other locations where flights would be increased would be two in New Delhi and Mumbai, with two each, two in Mumbai and maybe Bangalore.

He noted that as part of an expansion programme, the company it is also looking at more destinations to cater to. Currently, the locations are only Bangalore and Hyderabad.

Mr Werner noted that all the routes that Lufthansa was operating in were was profitable and it had not found reason to either close down or stop flights from any of the locations.

About 22-23 per cent of the company’s Asia Pacific revenues came in from India and it is the second biggest market after Japan, followed by China. Looking at the travel figures, he added that about 30 per cent of the entire business came in from the small and medium enterprise travellers.

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