New nonstop service from the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport to Germany begins Tuesday as Lufthansa expands into the market.
Lufthansa begins nonstop service from MSP to Germany on Tuesday
Flights will operate five times weekly. The carrier becomes the 19th to serve the Twin Cities.
A water cannon salute greeting the arrival of the airline’s first flight from Frankfurt will take place about 1:15 p.m. with musical performances, a ribbon cutting and remarks from Lufthansa and Metropolitan Airports Commission dignitaries to follow.
Festivities at Gate G13 will also include German-inspired treats and mementos for passengers boarding the first outbound flight, scheduled to depart at 3:05 p.m.
Flights between the Twin Cities and Frankfurt will operate five times a week year-round. With Lufthansa’s arrival, the MSP Airport is now served by 19 carriers.
“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 U.S.,” said Dirk Janzen, the airline’s vice president of passenger sales for the Americas.
The new service marks the airport’s first new transatlantic route in four years and comes as MSP is bracing for a surge of passengers heading to Europe this summer.
Already this year, Aer Lingus resumed service from the Twin Cities to Dublin, and Delta launched a new route to the capital of Ireland.
Along with Germany’s national airline, Lufthansa, Condor Air flies seasonally from Minneapolis-St. Paul to Frankfurt. Delta, Air France, KLM and Icelandair provide direct flights to other European destinations including London, Amsterdam, Paris and Iceland.
“It’s definitely the summer of Europe,” said Brian Ryks, CEO of the Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC), which owns and operates MSP. “Capacity to Europe from MSP is at an all-time high, with 28% more seats than a year ago and 14% more than the previous high set in 2019.”
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is predicting record-setting passenger volumes domestically between Memorial Day weekend and Labor Day. At MSP, the number of flights leaving will peak at 474 average daily departures this summer, the highest level in five years and 9% more than a year ago during the same period, according to the MAC.
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