Lufthansa voted best airline worldwide

Lufthansa has been named Best Airline Worldwide in the much coveted Business Travel Awards 2010.

The Awards, a combination both of the long-standing Business Travel World Awards and the prestigious Buying Business Travel Diamond Awards, which have been recognising industry success for the past 5 years, are the most coveted in the industry. The panel of judges, made up of senior buyers and leading business travel journalists, aim to commend and celebrate innovation, change management and excellence in execution and delivery across the entire travel industry through a rigorous judging process.

Lufthansa planes

After accepting the award at the 2010 Business Travel Awards ceremony in London last night, Marianne Sammann, Lufthansa General Manager UK and Ireland, said: “This award is an acknowledgment of the investment Lufthansa is making in continually enhancing the premium product available for business travellers and the excellent support we receive in delivering the services from our business partners. It also demonstrates continuing appreciation of the Lufthansa product and our ongoing efforts to offer the best network coverage, connectivity and flexibility throughout the challenges of the past year and our fully flexible top class Business Class products. The judges acknowledged that the number of flight connections we offer out of the UK and Ireland, currently 519 each week from seven airports into our current winter timetable of 12,406 weekly flights to 191 destinations in 78 countries primarily through our main hubs in Frankfurt and Munich, was a major factor in their decision.

“However, we cannot and will not become complacent as we strive to maintain our leading position in the market. That is why Lufthansa continually looks for new and innovative ways to further improve the travel experience for our customers and 2010 will be no different with the relaunch of our FlyNet on-board broadband Internet service. Our new enhanced service will permit inflight data transfer over standard GSM/GPRS mobile networks so Lufthansa passengers will not only have WLAN Internet access but will also be able to send SMS messages by mobile phone and transfer data via smartphones such as PDA, iPhone or BlackBerry devices.“

Together with its new business partner Panasonic, Lufthansa aims to equip a major part of its long-range fleet with FlyNet within the first year of operation and the service will gradually become available on all Lufthansa long-haul flights worldwide.