First Lufthansa flight to Kolkata after 35 years

Kolkata, Nov 16: After three-and-a-half decades, the first flight of Lufthansa Airlines will touch Netaji Subhash International Airport on December two resuming its service to the city.

'' The first flight with more than 40 passengers aboard, will arrive here from Frankfurt in the night of December two. This will be the beginning of our non-stop Kolkata-Frankfurt-Kolkata service thrice a week,'' Mr Werner Hessel, Director, South Asia of the official German carrier, said.

He was talking to reporters after a 30-minute meeting with Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee at the Writers Building.

Mr Hessel said the airliner would also set up its office in sector five of Salt Lake and its renewed operation would generate employment.

Lufthansa stopped operating from the city in 1971 following a slump in number of passengers and business.

'' In West Bengal a process of development is on and an investment climate prevails. We are back to facilitate the movement of prospective investors,'' Mr Hessel said.

Lufthansa will operate the route to Kolkata with an Airbus A340-300 offering a total of 221 seats in first, business and economy class.

At Frankfurt, departure and arrival times have been coordinated so as to give passengers arriving from India the best possible choice of connecting flights to the United States.

With this latest addition to flight schedule, Lufthansa has further expanded its route network in the emerging Asian markets of China and India. In February 2005, Lufthansa added Hyderabad to its network.

'' With Kolkata, our sixth destination in India and 45 flights per week from Germany to India, Lufthansa is set to become the number one carrier in India. We offer our customers more flights between Europe and the major economic centres in India than any other carrier,'' Mr Hessel said.

UNI