After an exciting final, the winners of the World Cup are ready to fly home to Germany –with Lufthansa.

The flight, with a special flight number LH2014, will be operated with the brand new Boeing 747-8, the “Queen of the Skies”, which is the longest aircraft in civil aviation history.

The aircraft, with the prefix D-ABYI and bearing the Fanhansa logo, just recently left the Boeing production plant in Seattle.

It is the 1,500th Boeing 747 ever built by the US manufacturer.

The German team takes off today at 16:00 from Galeao International Airport in Rio de Janeiro and will fly direct to Berlin landing around 09:00 local time. 

The flight will exclusively serve the German soccer team and its entourage with 23 flight attendants on-hand to ensure the trip is as comfortable as possible for the champions.

Gabriel Leupold, director Lufthansa in Latin America, said: “We are very proud to fly our heroes back to Germany.

“They have done an extraordinary job in Brazil – and they now deserve our very best aircraft and our very best service on their way home.”

Hundreds of thousands of fans will welcome the team in Berlin at the “Brandenburger Tor” in the city centre.

It will be one of the biggest celebrations Berlin has seen since the celebration of Germany’s unity in 1990.