The German airline no longer takes on flights between Munich and Nuremberg. In future, Lufthansa passengers will travel by bus. The reason are environmental concerns – and poor demand.
It takes around 1:50 hours by car via the A9, and 1:10 hours by train. Until the outbreak of the pandemic, however, it was also faster. Because Lufthansa offered a flight between Nuremberg and Munich four times a day. According to the plan, the flight lasted around 40 minutes.
This made NUE-MUC, according to the international codes of the two airports, the shortest route in the German airline’s network. But now Lufthansa has decided to delete it forever. The flights between Munich and Nuremberg will no longer be started. A Lufthansa spokeswoman said that passengers will be offered an express bus connection in the future. The journey takes 2:15 hours. This will be offered from July 5th – the connection will be “well received”, she said with a view to advance bookings. First had the specialist portal Airliners reported.
Criticism from environmentalists
The track had recently been heavily criticized. “The inner-Bavarian flight route Nuremberg – Munich is an ecological and economic absurdity and should be stopped today rather than tomorrow,” said Eike Hallitzky, chairman of the Bavarian Greens, in the newspaper “Welt” two years ago. Lufthansa had argued that the flights were mainly used by transfer passengers.
“Environmental protection is in the foreground on this ultra-short route,” said the spokeswoman about the connection that has now been set. In addition, the connection was already discontinued due to the pandemic in March 2020 due to the low demand.
Unfortunately no ICE connection
Lufthansa always uses an alternative route and a combination of means of transport on domestic German connections, added the spokeswoman. However, the offer to use the train fails because of the infrastructure: “Unlike Frankfurt Airport, Munich Airport does not have an ICE connection.” Therefore, there is now the bus.
According to the group, Nuremberg will remain connected to Lufthansa’s global route network via the Frankfurt hub. In the summer, Vienna and Zurich will be served again from Nuremberg. If you wanted to book a flight from Nuremberg to Munich on Wednesday, you could not call up the short-haul route, but were directed via the Frankfurt hub.
This article was written by Stefan Eiselin
with AFP material