Lufthansa to Discontinue Tallinn-Munich Flights (10)

Published: 29.11.2012 14:14

Photo: Postimees/Scanpix

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Munich has become the latest to join the growing list of cities that will soon be unreachable by direct flight from Tallinn Airport.

Lufthansa said today that it would discontinue its Tallinn-Munich service from April. A company sales representative, however, told uudised.err.ee that it would add additional flights to Frankfurt to allow more passengers to transfer through that hub.

News of the change comes less than two weeks after Estonian Air announced that it would stop servicing the Tallinn-Paris route next year and suspend flights to Vienna as part of route cuts designed to ease its financial hardship. It has also suspended its Tallinn-Tartu service.

Irish budget airline Ryanair also reduced its winter season destinations from Tallinn this year, leaving Barcelona, Bremen, Dublin, Düsseldorf and Stockholm off its seasonal schedule.

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Comments (10)

  • Joao Rei

    29.11.2012 14:30

    noooooooo. Tallinn is becoming ever more isolated...

  • EB

    29.11.2012 14:32

    This has nothing to do with airline restructuring, the economy, or even Tallinn itself. Augsburg Airways operates the Munich-Tallinn flights for Lufthansa and LH has divested its stake in the airline; hence, the flights won't be continued, and Lufthansa is moving capacity to Frankfurt.

  • NoExplane

    29.11.2012 14:38

    EB: whatever! Fact is you can't fly directly to Munich from Tallinn anymore. And this is bad news for Tallinn (I don't know if Munich cares).

  • Eesti Ram

    29.11.2012 14:57

    Ryanair no longer covers either Manchester or the East Midlands Airport as well, to fly into central England it is a 5 hour coach trip to Riga, it seems strange as being a regular traveller the flights always seemed busy, surely reducing frequency as opposed to the complete cutting of services could be looked at?

  • @NoExplane

    29.11.2012 15:57

    The Munich flight has almost zero O&D, therefore it's not worth keeping if it's not financially sustainable. Vast majority of passengers were connecting to other LH flights, so these passengers are now routed through Frankfurt. The 5 or 10 people actually traveling to Munich (what are the business links anyway? Minimal) aren't enough to support the daily (or twice-daily, as in the summer) flight.

  • EB

    29.11.2012 17:11

    Alternatively, Estonian Air could be brave and actually re-activate the Munich flight itself with a codeshare from Lufthansa, if LH were willing. The Munich flight was actually a far better performer for LH than the Frankfurt flight because of the early-morning connections and the yield was consistently superior. Problem is, could EA actually manage to have competitive prices for that sector? I doubt it. Palmer was going off about raising EA prices to market level, but EA is reliably the most expensive airline to fly to Tallinn.

  • NoExplane

    30.11.2012 07:12

    So first it has nothing to do with the economy and then it's not financially sustainable? I am confused. And I was not talking about financials at all. Munich is one of Europe's R&D centres. Being disconnected from there is a setback. No doubt about that.

  • @NoExplane

    30.11.2012 13:51

    It's not financially sustainable to keep this flight running on O&D. Flying to Munich alone doesn't make money, just like Hannover has been a huge failure for Estonian Air. LH makes money from connections. Because Augsburg Airways will no longer be a member of LH Group come next year, it is not possible to continue the flight on those reasons. While Munich is an R&D center for Europe, Tallinn is not, and quite a few smaller cities will be cut from Munich as a result of LH restructuring.

  • Explane

    30.11.2012 14:11

    Yes, perfectly agree but somehow from "This has nothing to do with airline restructuring, the economy, or even Tallinn itself" we ended now with : "It's not financially sustainable..,...cities will be cut from Munich as a result of LH restructuring... , ...While Munich is an R&D center for Europe, Tallinn is not..." which is the exact opposite of what EB posted.

  • @Explane

    30.11.2012 17:45

    Had the flight been operated by one of Lufthansa's other subsidiaries, it would have been kept. So it's not a question of the financial crisis or Tallinn not making money for Lufthansa. LH just decided to only use its own subsidiaries and ironically, only Augsburg has the right kind of fleet to operate that flight with a regional jet.