In a first for San Diego International Airport, Lufthansa plans to launch next spring a new nonstop flight to Munich after having suspended service to Frankfurt following the start of the pandemic early last year.
The new route, which will make its debut March 30, will initially operate three days a week but will expand to five flights weekly in May.
Lufthansa's decision to switch its San Diego service from Frankfurt to Munich was driven, in part, by a newer, more fuel efficient aircraft available for the flight. As Germany's secondary hub, Munich is also a better fit for San Diego, said Tal Muscal, Lufthansa's director of group communications for the Americas.
"When we launched the Frankfurt flight (out of San Diego) in 2018, it was our primary hub but since then we've expanded our operations and bolstered our intercontinental seats out of Munich," Muscal said. "And on this route, we're operating a newer aircraft, the Airbus A350-900, which is more fuel efficient and has 60 percent more business class seats than before.
"In general, ( Frankfurt) was a very active route before the pandemic — not only to Germany but also beyond, especially for communities in the San Diego area who saw this as their connection back home to parts of Europe and all over the world."
Lufthansa is the last of the three major international air carriers operating overseas flights out of San Diego to resume service since COVID-19 forced a suspension of service. In March of this year, Japan Airlines restarted its nonstop flights to Tokyo, although at a less frequent pace than before the pandemic, and British Airways resumed flying between San Diego and London Oct. 13, offering flights three times a week.
Demand on the London flight has been so high that British Airways quickly ramped up from the three flights to five in late October and then converted to daily service earlier this month, said Hampton Brown, the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority's vice president and chief revenue officer. Despite the rise of the more transmissible Omicron variant of COVID-19, Brown doesn't think that will dampen international travel.
"From what I've been hearing, so long as the vaccines and booster paradigm holds up against Omicron, that shouldn't have any bearing on demand," he said. "There's also mandatory testing in place. Now you need to get tested for COVID within 24 hours of departure for reentry into the U.S. It used to be within three days of departure. "
The new Munich flight will initially operate on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays, and in May of next year, service on Tuesdays and Saturdays will be added. A check of Lufthansa's website shows the flight out of San Diego departing at 5:10 p.m.
In addition to offering more premium seats, Lufthansa's A350-900 also has more overall seating capacity — 293 seats — than the aircraft used for the Frankfurt flight, which had between 251 and 279 seats, Muscal said.
" Munich has long been among our list of popular European destinations even without a nonstop flight offering from SAN," said Kimberly Becker, Airport Authority President and CEO. " San Diego has many economic ties to Germany, and the Munich region in particular, including the life sciences, car manufacturing, and technology industries that contribute to its interest."
One international flight that won't be returning to San Diego is seasonal nonstop service to Zurich, which was operated by Edelweiss, a Swiss leisure airline. The nonstop route began operation in 2017 but never resumed service after the pandemic.
"Edelweiss had planned to come back in 2020, and during the pandemic, they had to reduce their fleet size, so they could not maintain the broad network they had for long haul destinations that they had in 2019," Brown said. "So markets like Orlando and San Diego won't operate in 2022 but they have said they may come back in 2023.
"I think right now, with British Airways and Lufthansa, we are adequately served (in Europe) in this environment. Latin America is still an opportunity for us, even with this current situation, but we have to wait for when airlines are able to reinvest. There are a lot of issues with airlines as far as fleet and labor availability."
This story originally appeared in San Diego Union-Tribune.
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