Frankfurt Airport’s winter timetable 2013/14: number of seats offered per week grows

Frankfurt Airport’s (FRA) Winter Timetable 2013/14, which goes into effect on Sunday, October 27, will feature 99 passenger airlines serving 252 destinations in 107 countries worldwide. Compared to the 2012 winter schedule, the number of destinations will drop by 12 to 252 and the number of countries by 6 to 107. Nevertheless, more than half of FRA’s network – 136 intercontinental destinations around the globe – are located outside of Europe, thus underscoring the position and importance of Frankfurt as a vital international aviation hub. With nearly 4,000 flight departures per week for all planned passenger flights, FRA’s level of flight offerings will remain the same as last year’s winter schedule. However, the total number of seats available per week will grow by 2.2 percent to 670,000. This can be attributed to the sustainable trend at Frankfurt toward the greater use of larger aircraft types, whereby the average number of seats per plane will increase by 4 to 170 seats this coming winter timetable.

Three new intercontinental destinations, which were already introduced during the 2013 summer schedule, will also be served this winter: Air China will fly thrice weekly to Chengdu in China, and Iraqi Airways once a week to Bagdad and Erbil in Iraq.

Lufthansa will be deploying the most modern long-haul aircraft – the Airbus A380 and the Boeing 747-8 – on three additional routes via its FRA home base this winter. Since the end of September 2013, Lufthansa has already been flying the A380 superjumbo five times per week to the Chinese megacity of Shanghai, while the B747-8 has started shuttling between Frankfurt and Mexico City; and the third route will be served in October 2013 by a B747-8 on the FRA to Chicago run.

Frequencies on the Lufthansa routes to Philadelphia (U.S.A.) will increase from two to seven flights per week and to Damman (Saudi Arabia) from three to also seven flights per week via Frankfurt. In contrast, Lufthansa has decided to drop in December 2013 two African destinations from the schedule: Libreville in Gabon and Pointe Noire in the Congo Republic. Although TAM Airlines discontinued its connection to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in August 2013, Lufthansa will continue flying daily from FRA to Rio during the Winter Timetable 2013/14. Due to the ongoing civil war in Syria, flights to Aleppo and Damascus will still not be offered via FRA.

New in European traffic via FRA, there will be a total of 11 flights per week offered by Vueling to Barcelona, Spain, and by BMI Regional to Bristol, England. Lufthansa will be flying once a day to Naples in southern Italy. In addition to its existing four daily flights to Istanbul-Atatürk, Turkish Airlines will be offering another daily connection to Sabiha Gökcen Airport located in the Asian part of Turkey’s metropolis on the Bosphorus.

For the Olympic Winter Games being held in Russia in February 2014, FRA will provide up to three flights daily – offered by several airlines – to the host city of Sochi on the “Russian Riviera”.

Compared to last year’s winter schedule, Lufthansa will increase frequencies on a number of routes. These include Barcelona (Spain) with 49 flights per week, Bergen (Norway) and Cracow (Poland) with 21 flights per week each, as well as Tallinn (Estonia), Sofia (Bulgaria) and Edinburgh (U.K.) with 14 flights per week each. More flights will be flown via FRA to Poland: with frequencies increasing from 6 to 13 per week to Poznan in the northwest and from 5 to 11 flights per week to Rzeszów in the southeast of the country.

In the cargo sector, the number of freighter flights offered for the Winter Timetable 2013/14 will remain stable at 225 flights per week. Intercontinental connections will grow by 2.1 percent to 145 cargo departures per week, compared to last winter’s schedule. Thus, FRA will maintain its high 61.5 percent share of all German intercontinental cargo flights.

Passengers as well as meeters and greeters can check the current flight schedule at www.frankfurt-airport.com, under the section “Flights”. A copy of the latest FRA pocket Timetable brochure can be downloaded in PDF format. Smartphone users can also download their own copy of the FRA Airport App (in various formats and languages), which contains current flight information and other useful tips for their visit to the FRA global gateway.