The important air link between Nanjing and Germany was this morning restored in the wake of Covid, as the first renewed Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt arrived today at Lukou, marking another important milestone in Nanjing’s return to normality.
Flight LH780 made its arrival at Nanjing Lukou International Airport today at 11.14 am. With no crew waiting to relieve the incoming flight, so the aircraft will stay on the tarmac overnight, allowing the crew the necessary amount of rest time under international aviation regulations. The return flight to Frankfurt shall therefore depart tomorrow.
After their application to restore flights on a certain route, foreign airlines are permitted to initially operate only a once-weekly service to any given destination in China. In addition, China has put the onus on airlines to play their role in implementing epidemic prevention and control.
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As such, airlines are to discontinue their flights on any route for 1 week if five passengers are found to be Covid positive. In the case of more than 10 passengers testing positive, the airline’s flights to that destination are suspended for a 4-week period.
However, it works the other way too. Airlines may increase their flight frequency to two weekly flights if no passengers are found tested positive for 3 consecutive weeks.
Lufthansa certainly has its eyes on the latter scenario. The flight arriving today was operated by a Boeing 747 jumbo jet, significantly larger than the Airbus 340 that normally operates the route.
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With only 260 passengers on board the big plane, such offered the airline the opportunity to practice social distancing by keeping up to a third of seats empty.
With these epidemic prevention efforts in place and only one flight per week for now, tickets to Frankfurt are hard to come by. The earliest available seat The Nanjinger found yesterday evening was a one-way, economy-class ticket for the flight of 22 July, at a starting price of ¥13,450. Moments later, the flight was sold out.
The direct flight from Nanjing to Germany is popular among the Nanjing international community, not only for it being relatively short, at 10 hours, but also for the myriad of connecting flights operating out of Frankfurt to all over Europe and beyond.
