Lufthansa launches new Frankfurt-Minneapolis service

German carrier Lufthansa on Wednesday (5 June) launched a new direct service from Frankfurt to Minneapolis-Saint Paul.

The year-round service, announced last September, will operate five times weekly on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. Operated by Boeing 787-9 aircraft, the service departs the carrier’s German hub at 11:10 and arrives in Minneapolis at 13:15. Meanwhile flights from Minneapolis depart at 15:05 and land in Frankfurt at 6:30 the following day.

“The launch of this route serves as a main bedrock of our summer expansion plan in the United States, the most important market outside of the group’s home markets, and we could not be happier to add more opportunities and capacity into and out of the US,” said Dirk Janzen, vice president passenger sales, The Americas for Lufthansa Group.

Brian Ryks, CEO of the Metropolitan Airports Commission, which owns and operates Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport (MSP), said the new service “addresses growing demand for travel to Germany and other European destinations”, with more than 35,500 passengers expected to travel from MSP to Germany.

The new service complements Lufthansa’s recently launched flights between Seattle and Munich as well as a new direct route from Frankfurt to Raleigh-Durham in North Carolina, which will commence on Thursday (6 June).

Lufthansa Group airlines, which also includes Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, Eurowings and Swiss, will operate 26 routes and some 400 weekly flights to the US this summer.