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FIRST AIRBUS A319 JOINS LUFTHANSA FLEET

The first Airbus A319, the smallest member of Airbus' narrow-body airliner family, was welcomed on July 25 at the Lufthansa base in Frankfurt. Lufthansa's CEO, J¸rgen Weber, can appreciate the economical benefits of the Airbus "Junior", since he has to carry out another drastic cost cutting program for his airline. As compared with the Boeing 737-200, the A319's predecessor in the Lufthansa fleet, the new airliner with its CFM56-5A engines uses approximately 30 percent less fuel.

According to Airbus Industrie calculations, the A319's commonality with the other Airbus single-aisle airliners (A320 and A321) saves more than one million Marks (per year) for each new aircraft purchased. The identical crew qualification for the three aircraft gives the airline more flexibility: Delays, technical problems or extreme weather conditions continuously stir up the flight schedule. According to a Lufthansa study, 6100 of 13000 aircraft movements have to be newly dispatched within two weeks of their scheduled time. Approximately one third of the flights must be modified within the last three days before the planned departure. It will eventually pay off if the dispatch center can easily reschedule a Crew, which, for example, was supposed to fly an A320, on an A319 or an A321.

Besides Swissair and Air Inter (which is now Air France Europe), Lufthansa is the third airline that is operating all three types from the A320 family. Lufthansa has ordered 20 aircraft, the last one to be delivered in November of 1998.

The A319, which is shortened by 3,73 m as compared to the A320, can carry 126 passengers in a two-class configuration over a distance of 4350 km (3300 km with maximum payload). According to Jürgen Weber, this enables the smallest Airbus to even reach destinations in the Asian part of Russia, such as Alma Ata.

This was not possible with the predecessing Boeing 737-200. In the bid for the 737-200 successor, Boeing would have loved to leave the Toulouse based competitor behind with its newest generation 737-600. However, analyzing the operating costs, including expenses for fuel, maintenance and the crews, revealed that the 737-600 "could not have been economically operated in the Lufthansa fleet" (quoting from Lufthansa). According to a Lufthansa paper, the 737-600's wing, which was designed for transcontinental flights within the USA, is oversized for the typical Lufthansa routes.

From page 28 of FLUG REVUE 9/96

Lufthansas home page ist at http://www.lufthansa.de.