Lufthansa to increase number of Baku-Frankfurt flights in April
By Nigar Orujova
Lufthansa, the Germany flag carrier and the largest airline in Europe, both in terms of overall passengers carried and fleet size, is expanding air service between Frankfurt and Baku, Ronald Schulz Regional Director Passenger Sales Russian Federation & C.I.S. at Lufthansa Group said at a Lufthansa press-breakfast on Tuesday.
According to Schulz beginning from March 31, Lufthansa increases the number of flights from Baku to Frankfurt from four up to five flights a week on an ongoing basis.
With summer timetable introduction, Lufthansa planes will carry out flights five days a week, except Tuesday and Saturday, early in the morning, allowing passengers to use the company's connecting flights.
The carrier will be using the Airbus A330 and A340 aircraft with three-class composition, including first, business and economy classes.
Stefan Versemann, the company representative in Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, said Lufthansa marked the remarkable success in its activity in Azerbaijan in 2012.
In particular, passenger transportation to Baku and Ashgabat rose by 6.8 percent and the company's revenue grew by 17.4 percent, with 85 percent of passenger traffic accounted for passengers traveling to Baku and 15 percent passengers traveling to Ashgabat.
"These allow the company to upgrade services in the region and actively invest in new flights and services," Versemann believes
Versemann added that 47 percent of the flights were booked through the Lufthansa official website in Azerbaijan.
Now Lufthansa plans to modernize the business class cabins in all their airlines, including those in Azerbaijan by 2015. The company will invest 50 million euros for modernizing all the aircrafts.
Access to the broadband Internet is also a new possibility available for Azerbaijani passengers during their entire flight.
FlyNet service allows passengers to stay online. Moreover, businessmen could establish corporative server connection through the Virtual Private Network, a secure channels of data pass.
The company also plans to introduce data change on GSM and GPRS standards, which includes sending SMS and data operating through smart phones in the future.
However, mobile phone calls will still be forbidden on the Lufthansa aircrafts, because, as the company researches show, passengers prefer prohibiting phone calls on board.
Martin Riecken, Lufthansa spokesman, spoke on the company's achievements in the previous year, noting that Lufthansa carried 103.1 million passengers by over one million flights and got 30.1 billion in revenues in 2012.