Lufthansa schedules its last A340-600 flights for 18 October

Lufthansa's four remaining Airbus A340-600s are in the timetable through 18 October 2026. From Frankfurt they are filed on a daily New York service, LH400 and LH401, and on Washington Dulles flights LH416, LH417, LH418 and LH419. AeroRoutes reported on 6 May that this end date replaced an earlier filing through 24 October, and that the schedule can still move. The 18 October date is the current plan. It is not a departure the airline has locked in public as a one-off farewell flight.

The retirement itself was decided earlier. On 16 April, Lufthansa Group said the last four A340-600s would leave in October, and called that a definitive end for the type at Lufthansa. The same step parks two Boeing 747-400s from October for the winter. The company said the 747-400's final withdrawal is planned for the following year, so those two aircraft are a winter grounding, not the same exit as the A340-600.

The group tied the package to fuel and to labour disputes. It said kerosene prices had more than doubled compared with the period before the war in Iran. About 80 percent of fuel for its passenger airlines is hedged. The other 20 percent is bought at market prices. Lufthansa said removing thirstier aircraft would cut that unhedged share by about 10 percent.

The first cut in the package was Lufthansa CityLine. Its 27 aircraft were taken out of the schedule from 18 April. The group described the subsidiary as loss-making, and said the Canadair regional jets were close to the end of their working life and costly to operate. For the 2026/27 winter it also plans to trim the core Lufthansa brand's short- and medium-haul flying by the equivalent of five aircraft, while concentrating that traffic on the group's six hubs.

Chief financial officer Till Streichert said the acceleration could not be put off, because of fuel costs and geopolitical instability. He said the point was a clearer and more competitive short- and medium-haul business. He also said taking CityLine out had already been the plan, and that the crisis only brought the date forward. He called that painful for the people at CityLine, and said the group wanted to find them other work inside the company. A separate, older target, to cut 4,000 administrative jobs across the group by 2030, is still in place. April added tighter rules on hiring, internal events and outside consultants in support of it.

Lufthansa has flown the A340-600 since 2003. Four are left. If the 18 October timetable holds, those four come off passenger services then. The airline has already described that as the end of the type in its fleet.