Lufthansa CityLine

Updated on Nov 23, 2024

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CL CLH Frequent-flyer program Miles & More Parent company Lufthansa Group Founded 1958 Fleet size 57		CLH HANSALINE Destinations 75 Headquarters Cologne, Germany Number of employees 2,532 Parent organization Lufthansa

Alliance Star Alliance (affiliate) Hubs Munich Airport, Frankfurt Airport

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Lufthansa CityLine GmbH is a German airline with its headquarters on the grounds of Munich Airport. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Lufthansa and maintains hubs at Frankfurt Airport and Munich Airport, from where it operates a dense domestic and European network as a member of Lufthansa Regional. Since October 2015, it also operates some long-haul routes on behalf of its parent company.

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Early years

The airline was founded as Ostfriesische Lufttaxi (OLT) in 1958 and became Ostfriesische Lufttransport (OLT) in 1970 - which existed until 2013 as a separate airline - in Emden. It was reorganised and renamed as DLT Luftverkehrsgesellschaft mbH on 1 October 1974 and began cooperation with Lufthansa in 1978 with short-range international routes.

By 1988 all operations were on behalf of Lufthansa. In March 1992 DLT became a wholly owned subsidiary of Lufthansa and was renamed Lufthansa CityLine. Lufthansa CityLine employs 2,332 people, of whom 664 are cockpit crew, 849 cabin crew and 819 work in the technical and administrative areas as of 31 December 2011.

Lufthansa placed an order on 17 April 2007 for 30 Embraer E-190/195 and 15 Bombardier CRJ-900 aircraft to directly replace LH CityLine's fleet of BAe 146 and Avro RJ aircraft. The last Avro RJ 85 took off from Cologne Bonn Airport on August 27, 2012 as LH1985.

Development since 2014

The airline was previously headquartered at Cologne Bonn Airport. In May 2013 it was announced that the management and administration offices of CityLine will be relocated from Cologne to Munich. The move was completed as of September 2014. Its corporate headquarters are now at the Flight Operations Center (FOC) at Munich Airport.

In late 2014, parent company Lufthansa announced it would begin transferring eight of its Airbus A340-300 aircraft to CityLine. After reconfiguration to a high-density configuration, these aircraft will be owned by CityLine and operated by CityLine pilots, but wet-leased back to Lufthansa to be used on leisure routes and serviced by Lufthansa cabin crews starting in 2015. The first destinations to be served by the new CityLine-operated long-haul fleet are Cancún, Mexico; Male, Maldives; Mauritius; Tampa, USA; and Panama City, Panama. These were later expanded to include Philadelphia and Montreal.

In March 2015, the Lufthansa Group announced it would transfer 17 Embraer 195 jets from Lufthansa CityLine to Austrian Airlines. As a replacement, CityLine will receive several more Bombardier CRJ900s that are currently being phased out at sister company Eurowings. These will also be used to replace the remaining slightly smaller Bombardier CRJ700s which left CityLine's fleet by 29 March 2015.

Current fleet

As of February 2017, the Lufthansa CityLine fleet consists of the following aircraft:

Historical fleet

Over the years, Lufthansa CityLine has operated the following aircraft types:

Accidents and incidents

On 6 January 1993, Lufthansa Flight 5634 from Bremen to Paris, which was carried out under the Lufthansa CityLine brand using a Contact Air Dash 8-300 (registered D-BEAT), hit the ground 1800 metres short of the runway of Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport, resulting in the death of four out of the 23 passengers on board. The four crew members survived. The accident occurred after the pilot had to abort the final approach to the airport because the runway had been closed due to the aircraft ahead, a Korean Air Boeing 747, suffering a blown tire upon landing.

On 28 December 1999, a passenger on board Lufthansa Flight 5293 from Prague to Düsseldorf, which was operated by Lufthansa CityLine using a Bombardier CRJ100 aircraft (registered D-ACJA), claimed to have a bomb on board and demanded the flight be diverted to the United Kingdom. The pilots convinced him to have a fuel stop at Düsseldorf Airport, where all passengers left the plane (many of them unaware of the hijacking attempt), and the perpetrator was arrested.

On 5 July 2014, Lufthansa Flight 1360 from Frankfurt to Katowice, operated by Lufthansa CityLine using a Bombardier CRJ700 aircraft (registered D-ACPJ), landed on an unopened and under construction runway at Katowice International Airport. The pilots performed a normal approach from the East in good conditions and visibility before landing on the closed runway. No one was hurt, and the aircraft later made a technical flight to land on the correct runway. The Polish State Commission on Aircraft Accidents Investigation made recommendations to add additional markings to the runway (in the form of red X shapes on the runway), and to modify the ATIS to include warnings about the closed runway. The CAT I ILS was disabled due to the construction, and the aircraft featured an older EGPWS that lacked a "Smart Landing" mode and high resolution map of the area which prevented it from informing the crew of the situation. During the approach, PAPI and threshold lights were set to maximum brightness. The incident is still being investigated by Polish authorities.

References

Lufthansa CityLine Wikipedia

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