Lufthansa has been posting load factors ranging between 80 and 100 per cent on its Frankfurt-Malta service and this must have contributed to the decision to launch a weekly flight from Munich in mid-2011.

“Our flights from and to Frankfurt are very successful,” the German carrier’s new general manager for Malta, Sylvain Heydlauf, notes. He explains that “a number of factors in the profitability argument won the case for an additional flight”.

The plan is for the Munich flight to depart in late afternoon towards the end of the week.

Lufthansa’s daily service to Frankfurt offers connections to over 90 destinations in Europe. The network also allows passengers from Malta to travel on to 21 cities in North America.

Lufthansa, which has been flying to Malta since March 1984, serves 206 destinations in 82 countries. Together with its airline subsidiaries, Lufthansa carried over 76 million passengers last year.

It fully owns Swiss International Airlines, British Midland and Austrian Airlines and plans to assume a 100 per cent stake in Brussels Airlines (it now owns 45 per cent of the shares). Across the Atlantic, Lufthansa has a 15.6 per cent interest in JetBlue, based in New York JFK airport.

“Lufthansa is playing a major role in the consolidation process in Europe,” Mr Heydlauf said.

The airline is a founding member of the Star Alliance, considered to be the world’s leading group of airlines, embracing a staggering 28 carriers, which, together, log 21,200 daily departures, serve 1,172 destinations in 181 countries and operate a fleet of over 4,000 aircraft.

Lufthansa will be investing €13 billion in new aircraft between this year and 2016, in which period it is expecting to take delivery of 146 new planes, with the airline taking offer of its first giant Airbus A380 this spring.