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Lufthansa is a German airline group that flies passengers and cargo around the world and also runs aircraft maintenance and airline catering businesses.
Lufthansa is one of Europe's biggest airline groups. Most people know it for the blue-and-yellow planes: it flies passengers on short hops around Europe and long-haul routes to the Americas, Asia, and Africa, and it also carries freight in the bellies of those planes and in dedicated cargo aircraft. But the company is more than one airline. It owns a family of carriers — including Swiss, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, and Eurowings — that lets it serve everyone from budget travelers to business flyers connecting through big hubs like Frankfurt and Munich.
A big chunk of Lufthansa's money comes from selling tickets, and the rest comes from two side businesses that are easy to miss. One is aircraft maintenance: Lufthansa Technik repairs and overhauls planes not just for its own airlines but for other carriers too, which is steady, contract-style work. The other is catering: its LSG group makes and delivers the meals loaded onto flights. Those businesses are less glamorous than flying, but they bring in revenue from customers who aren't Lufthansa passengers at all. The airline industry is brutally tough. Fuel prices, recessions, strikes, and competition from low-cost carriers like Ryanair and easyJet can crush profits, and a global shock like the pandemic nearly wiped out air travel for a while. Lufthansa had to take a German government bailout during COVID and then paid it back. More recently, it has been buying up smaller airlines to grow — including a stake in Italy's ITA Airways — and working through the messy, expensive job of integrating them.
So the simple version: Lufthansa sells seats and cargo space, and it also earns fees fixing and feeding airplanes. Its size and its spread across multiple brands and businesses give it some cushion, but it is still an airline at heart. When people stop flying, its numbers fall fast, and when travel booms, it makes real money.
Saved answer · last researched 15 Nov 2026