Lower fuel prices, greater consumer demand and more cost- and environmentally efficient aircraft all combined to bring back a nonstop flight between Munich and Denver International Airport.
The flight, operated by German airline Lufthansa, was announced Thursday morning.
“It’s definitely going to stimulate both corporate and tourist traffic,” DIA’s vice president of air service development Laura Jackson said in an interview Wednesday.
A much-heralded Lufthansa Denver-Munich route, announced in 2007, was canceled in 2008 due to low demand.
The sluggish 2008 economy also added fuel to that fire, Lufthansa’s North American spokeswoman Christina Semmel said, but consumer interest and demand has since returned.
Of course lower fuel prices and the more economical and environmentally friendly twin-engine Airbus A330-300 — which Semmel says uses 12 percent less fuel than the 2007 flight aboard an Airbus A340-300 — also help.
“We’ve identified that market conditions have changed significantly, and traffic between Munich and Denver has grown substantially,” she said. “There’s just no better time to relaunch it at this point than now.”
In the years since the Denver-Munich flight was dropped, travel between DIA and the city in southern Germany has grown 50 percent to about 33,000 annual passengers, Jackson said.
And, she added, those passengers are underserved: only 80 percent are able to fly the route nonstop, according to data DIA gathered from International Air Transport Association, the airline industry trade association.
“That means if 100 people fly to Munich per day, only 80 of them can go nonstop, and 20 already have to connect,” she said. “This will help bring us up to the bar of having 100 percent capacity on our demand.”
The flights, which begin May 11, will have 236 seats: eight first class, 30 business, 21 premium economy and 177 economy.
It will operate five days per week — every day but Thursday and Sunday — and depart Denver at 4:05 p.m., arriving in Munich the next morning. Return flights will depart Munich just before noon local time and arrive in Denver 10 hours, 45 minutes later at 2:30 p.m.
The flight is expected to directly create 79 new related airline and airport jobs, with $4 million in annual wages and an overall $12 million annual direct economic impact, Jackson said.
However, spending by tourists and business travelers will help that economic impact swell to more than $80 million annually, Jackson said, and could bring as many as 700 new jobs to the state.
Denver was the only United hub without service to Munich, Jackson said, which further fueled the DIA’s desire to bring back the flight
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Several incentives helped to sweeten the deal for Lufthansa: DIA’s incentive program offers the airline $5 million in operational offsets, which will be based on passenger numbers, and marketing valued at $1 million.
“It really depends on how many passengers gets on the flight,” Jackson said. “We hope it incentivizes Lufthansa to work with us to get people on this flight.”
The Colorado Economic Development Commission also approved incentives of $300,000, Metro EDC threw in $50,000 and Visit Denver added $25,000 to the deal.
Lufthansa is part of United’s Star Alliance network. The flight to Denver opens up 85 destinations in North America from Europe and makes about 30 new European markets one stop away from Denver.
“Among these new one-stop markets are — among others — Ancona, Genoa and Trieste in Italy, Ankara and Izmir in Turkey, Cluj and Timisoara in Romania, Dortmund and Paderborn in Germany, as well as Sarajevo in Bosnia,” Semmel said. “We just really think it’s going to draw huge interest and demand for connections to go throughout Europe and beyond.”
Munich is the European headquarters of several companies, including Siemens and BMW and is a close second to New York City for its number of publishing houses.
Laura Keeney: 303-954-1337, lkeeney@denverpost.com or @LauraKeeney
