|
|||||||
Founded | 1977 (as German Cargo) 1993 (current entity) |
||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Hubs | Frankfurt Airport | ||||||
Secondary hubs | |||||||
Fleet size | 19 | ||||||
Destinations | 57 | ||||||
Company slogan | Networking the world. | ||||||
Parent company | Lufthansa Group | ||||||
Headquarters | Frankfurt, Germany | ||||||
Key people | Peter Gerber, Chairman | ||||||
Website | lufthansa-cargo |
Lufthansa Cargo AG is a German cargo airline and a wholly owned subsidiary of Lufthansa. It operates worldwide air freight and logistics services and is headquartered at Frankfurt Airport, the main hub of Lufthansa. Besides operating dedicated cargo planes, the company also has access to cargo capacities of 350 passenger aircraft of the Lufthansa Group.
Lufthansa operated a cargo subsidiary, called German Cargo, between 1977 and 1993 (earlier still, cargo operations were executed in-house, under the Lufthansa Cargo name), when -in an effort to restructure the company- the cargo division was re-integrated into its parent, and split up into two parts (one for scheduled operations using Lufthansa-owned aircraft, and one for freight and logistics services using chartered or leased aircraft).
Lufthansa Cargo was created as a limited stock company on 30 November 2004, along with Lufthansa Cargo Charter. Lufthansa Cargo uses LH (the same IATA code as Lufthansa), as well as GEC (the former ICAO code of German Cargo) as airline codes. Lufthansa is unique compared to its major European competitors like British Airways and Air France in that the cargo business is organized in an entirely different airline entity. For some years, Lufthansa Cargo (including the freight transported in the cargo holds of mainline Lufthansa passenger aircraft) was the leading cargo airline in terms of international freight tonne-kilometres carried, but has since been surpassed by Cathay Pacific and Korean Air Cargo.
As of 2011, all Lufthansa Cargo aircraft are based at Frankfurt Airport, the seventh busiest freight hub in the world, where the airline enjoys a strong co-operation with Fraport, the operator of the airport. Cargo facilities at the airport are divided into two places (Cargo City North and South), of which the first one is nearly exclusively used by Lufthansa Cargo.