On Feb 4 at 1:24 pm, the crew of the Lufthansa record-breaking flight received a very warm “welcome back” upon their return in Germany. After landing at Munich Airport, the Airbus A350-900 was greeted by the fire department with a water salute. The Lufthansa crew was welcomed by Stefan Kreuzpaintner, Lufthansa Chief Commercial Officer & Hub Manager Munich, along with the CEO of the airport, Jost Lammers.
Last Sunday, 31 January, the 16-member crew led by Flight Captain Rolf Uzat departed on the longest nonstop flight in the history of Lufthansa. The flight time from Hamburg to the Mount Pleasant military base on the Falkland Islands took exactly 15:26 hours for the 13,700-kilometer route.
The return flight was another record-breaker: The Airbus A350-900 “Braun-schweig” completed the 13,400-kilometer route in 14:03 hours. In the history of Munich Airport, this was the first aircraft to ever land after operating such a long distance without having a stopover. Onboard return special flight were 40 passengers from the crew of the research vessel “Polarstern”, who flew back home on behalf of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven (Germany).
Because the hygiene requirements for this flight were extremely strict, this round-trip will go down in the history of Lufthansa: The passengers and crew were required to quarantine for two weeks before this flight in a hotel in Bremerhaven. The entire duty trip took a total of 20 days for the crew; no other crew had recently completed more duty days coherently.
