Lufthansa no longer takes up the controversial route within Bavaria

150 kilometers as the crow flies in around 40 minutes of flight time: Lufthansa no longer takes the shortest flight connection in Germany between the Bavarian metropolises of Munich and Nuremberg to Corona. The crane confirmed this on request from airliners.de.

According to a spokeswoman, Lufthansa is offering customers who want to travel from Nuremberg to an onward flight from Munich Airport a “Lufthansa Express Bus” connection instead. Lufthansa is striving to combine means of transport in the best possible way and consistently expand the intermodal offer. In the case of Munich, the airport’s lack of ICE connection stands in the way of intermodality between rail and flight.

Nevertheless, the Lufthansa Group in Nuremberg continues to rely on flights. “Nuremberg is currently connected directly and conveniently to the global route network of the Lufthansa Group via the Frankfurt hub,” explains the spokeswoman. In addition, the group hubs in Zurich and Vienna would again be served from Nuremberg in the summer.

Route exclusively feeder flights

Before the pandemic, Lufthansa offered up to four daily round trips between Nuremberg and Munich. The connection was used almost exclusively by transit passengers who switched to international flights in Munich, as an analysis by airliners.de from 2019 had shown.

In November 2018 as a whole, just 155 people had Munich as their final destination, i.e. around five people a day. Among them are probably even some transfer passengers who had booked a connecting flight at their own risk in Munich, whereas the transfer traffic in November 2018 was around 5,300 passengers

Lufthansa has repeatedly come under heavy criticism for the inner-Bavarian connection. The Bavarian Greens state chairman Eike Hallitzk, for example, described the route as an “ecological and economic absurdity”. It should be stopped today rather than tomorrow.