Lufthansa is offering customers more belly capacity in Europe this winter following its cooperation agreement with ITA Airways, as well as expanded global belly and freighter capacity.
Rome-headquartered ITA Airways has officially been part of the Lufthansa Group since the beginning of the year and earlier this summer Lufthansa Cargo added Rome-Fiumicino (FCO) as its fifth hub and began marketing the cargo capacities on ITA Airways routes.
The cargo division of Lufthansa said that the successful expansion of its cooperation with ITA Airways in June will see it market almost all ITA Airways' belly capacities on continental and intercontinental routes under its own airway bill number from the end of October — including those departing from FCO.
Until regulatory approval, routes to and from the US and Canada are excluded.
The expanded cooperation agreenment offers "Lufthansa Cargo customers an additional high-performance hub in southern Europe and perspectively almost 20 percent more capacity", said Lufthansa Cargo.
As well as FCO, Lufthansa Cargo offers cargo services via its home hub in Frankfurt and with a wide range of routing options via its hubs in Munich, Vienna and Brussels.
Further frequency increases and new destinations in Lufthansa Group's winter flight schedule will strengthen the global range of belly capacities further, said Lufthansa Cargo.
The 2025/2026 winter flight schedule will come into effect on 26 October. Alongside its own freighter services to 53 destinations, Lufthansa Cargo also markets additional capacity of up to 7,500 flights per week to over 350 destinations, operated by Lufthansa Airlines, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, Discover Airlines, ITA Airways and SunExpress.
This winter, Austrian Airlines will expand its service from Vienna (VIE) to Bangkok (BKK), offering up to two daily connections. Brussels Airlines is also expanding its network to African destinations including Lomé (LFW, Togo), Dakar (DSS, Senegal), Conakry (CKY, Guinea), Monrovia (ROB, Liberia), Accra (ACC, Ghana) and Freetown (FNA, Sierra Leone), offering additional weekly connections. New to Lufthansa Group's flight schedule is Discover Airlines' connection from Frankfurt (FRA) to the Seychelles (SEZ).
Lufthansa Cargo continues to offer its customers connections to almost all economic markets worldwide with a Boeing 777 freighter schedule offering up to 87 weekly rotations to a total of 36 destinations.
Almaty (ALA) will again be added to the range of cargo destinations in Central Asia this winter. The transpacific flight from Ho Chi Minh City (SGN) to Los Angeles (LAX) will now have a stopover in Shanghai (PVG). This means that customers will be able to send cargo directly from Shanghai to North America.
Cargo customers now have access to up to 50 weekly frequencies to the Asia-Pacific region, with services to 17 destinations in Asia. Lufthansa also offers transport solutions within the American economic area, providing 28 weekly services to eleven North American destinations and four weekly services to four South American destinations.
In particular, the carrier's home market in Europe, as well as the Middle East and Africa, benefits from its own Airbus A321F fleet. This winter, customers can book up to 37 weekly flights to 20 destinations from the Frankfurt and Munich hubs for fast transport on short- and medium-haul routes.
The A321F network was recently further strengthened by the opening of the cargo station in Beirut (BEY) at the beginning of July.
Ashwin Bhat, chief executive of Lufthansa Cargo, said: “Our winter flight schedule clearly demonstrates that ‘Enabling Global Business’ is not just our purpose, but something we embody every day at Lufthansa Cargo.
"By marketing additional belly capacities from ITA Airways and strengthening our belly network, as well as offering an even broader freighter flight schedule, we can provide our customers with more connections than before.
"Nevertheless, we continue to review our network on an ongoing basis, remaining in close dialogue with our customers so that we can continue to provide flexible and reliable transport solutions and respond to changing trade flows."
