Lufthansa to add 30 new destinations to post-pandemic network

German airline Lufthansa is planning to rebuild its route network after the pandemic forced it to cancel dozens of flights for months at a time in 2020 and 2021, it said on Tuesday, reported dpa.

Lufthansa will rely above all on its Frankfurt hub and from September will fly directly to 150 destinations from there, it said. This represents an increase of 30 routes since before the pandemic began, reflecting the massive consumer demand for travel after lockdowns around the world.

In particular, Lufthansa has added a number of short and medium-haul destinations, which are in greater demand from tourists, to their Frankfurt flight schedule.

The Lufthansa Group, which also owns Swiss, Austrian and Brussels Airlines, said it will only be re-establishing 88 per cent of its other airlines' networks, however.

According to the air safety organization Eurocontrol, Lufthansa proper averaged 822 flights per day during the week to August 22, around 46 per cent fewer than in the same week in 2019.

British Airways was in the air even less, with a drop of 64 per cent, while Turkish Airlines missed its pre-crisis level by only 10 per cent, with 1,333 flights per day.

Overall, air traffic over Europe reached more than 24,600 daily flights last week, around 70 per cent of 2019 levels.