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Defense of the top position

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Lufthansa has put the new Pier A-Plus at Frankfurt Airport into operation. Connoisseur Circle has already taken a look around.

The facts are tough. Competition among Europe's major hubs is fierce. In addition, these hubs and their most important airlines, in the case of Frankfurt Lufthansa, also have to fight against the growing shift in traffic flows, for example via the Middle East. The fact that Europe's aviation industry will post losses of 1.2 billion US dollars this year does not really make this competition any easier.
With the opening of the A-Plus terminal extension at Frankfurt Airport, Lufthansa hopes to continue to assert itself in this competition and defend its still profitable long-haul business as well as possible. After all, this cross-subsidizes the loss-making European traffic.

"With A-Plus, we can finally dock 100 percent of our intercontinental flights at the terminals," explained Michael Spors, Head of Infrastructure Development Frankfurt, to Travel Express during an exclusive preview. And indeed, the 790-metre-long building impresses with its simple elegance, plenty of light, size and practicality.
A-Plus is used exclusively by Lufthansa and its partner airlines. Some Austrian Airlines flights will also depart from here. "We can currently only handle 50 percent of our European flights (narrow-body) at the terminals via passenger boarding bridges. We can now increase this figure. 29 percent of aircraft will park on the apron, the rest directly on the buildings.

Anyone who knows Frankfurt is aware of the sometimes long distances involved in changing planes. "Lufthansa is still sticking to the 45-minute minimum transfer time," emphasizes Spors. "We know today that most transfer passengers prefer to have a little more time. We also offer the service of picking up passengers at the aircraft if times are tight. Our Miss Connection rate is less than one percent," says Spors.

A-Plus can simultaneously handle four Airbus A380/Boeing 747-8I and three Airbus A340-600 or, alternatively, eleven medium-haul aircraft.
"In Frankfurt, we turn around an Airbus A380 in 2 hours 50 minutes, i.e. for the next flight. For the Boeing 747-8I, we calculate 2 hours 30 minutes. We board an A380 in 40 minutes€. Spors expects A-Plus, whose passenger volume of six million passengers is as large as that of Hanover Airport, to handle up to 80 aircraft a day.
A-Plus will primarily accommodate US flights in the morning hours and numerous European flights and selected destinations in Asia in the afternoon. Singapore Airlines, for example, will handle its A380 here. Together with other A380 gates in other areas of the airport, Lufthansa has eight such parking positions exclusively for the world's largest commercial aircraft. The airport has a total of 13 such parking positions.

"In the meantime, we have also developed a concept to expand A-Plus by a further eight gates. This would then offer a capacity of 12 million passengers per year," says Spors.
A total of 800 million euros has been invested in the property. Of this, 40 million euros was invested by Lufthansa, for example in five new lounges. These include the largest Senator Lounge in the Crane network with 2,100 square meters.

Kurt Hofmann

(October 2012)

Defense of the top position

Kurt Hofmann

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