The Lufthansa Airlines will add a B747-400 flight to operate the Shanghai-Frankfurt daily scheduled flight from May 5, 2001, thus making it the first European airlines to provide the non-stop Shanghai-Frankfurt flight.

Official of Lufthansa said March 19 that the new flight will strengthen Lufthansa's leading status in China. By then, Lufthansa will have 24 non-stop flights between China and Europe every week, ranking first among all other airlines. And it will soon be the first European airline to provide daily flights between Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong.

Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Ing. E. h. J?rgen Weber, Chairman of the Executive Board of Lufthansa, says that the new flight will better meet the increasingly growing needs in Sino-German transportation. Compared with that of 1999, Lufthansa increased 54.8 percent in turnover with its seat- occupancy raised by 22.6 percentage points in Shanghai in 2000.

The first Shanghai-Frankfurt flight will take off at 11:10 on May 5, 2001, and reaches the destination at 16:25 the same afternoon; and the return flight departs from Frankfurt at 17:10 and lands in Shanghai at 9:25 next morning.

(People’s Daily 03/21/2001)