A new Lufthansa service will be launched between Frankfurt and the Angolan capital, Luanda, on 1 April 2008.The non-stop route will be operated once a week by an Airbus 340-300 with 221 seats. “With this new service in our timetable we count already 15 destinations in Africa,” says Dr. Karl-Rudolf Rupprecht, Lufthansa’s Senior Vice President Hub Management Frankfurt. “The non-stop connection to Angola will provide much better connectivity to this region, which is of key importance for the petroleum and raw materials industry. Our passengers will be able to book flights to Luanda in First, Business and Economy Class.”

Lufthansa’s new service to Luanda will also open up an important growth market on the West coast of Africa. Angola is Africa’s second-largest exporter of petroleum after Nigeria and generates about 80 per cent of its national income from sales of crude oil. Many global oil companies are represented in Luanda, which has a population of about three million. Trade in other raw materials such as diamonds and ore has fuelled strong economic growth in the former Portuguese colony. Thanks to massive investment in infrastructure since the end of the civil war in 2002, Luanda has again become an important economic centre in Africa.
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