One Last Landing: Lufthansa's A340-600 Farewell

Today we're on board the very last Lufthansa A340-600 passenger flight, taking this spectacular airplane across the Atlantic one final time from Washington Dulles to Frankfurt on LH419. After a little over two decades with the airline, it's time to say goodbye and we're taking you along for all of it. One more takeoff, one more night over the ocean, and a final arrival back home. Washington Dulles airport, you can already see that it's not Gabe with me i'm not gabe no it's not gabe it's ian our director of communications and you will certainly know him from our podcast or hopefully the blend video absolutely and the reason we're here today is because this 75 meter long airplane will retire today it's the very last A340-600 rotation for lufthansa airlines what an absolute party there's a party inside the terminal there's There's going to be a party on the airplane. It's going to be fantastic. Let's go. Let's go. It's almost time. It's almost time. How did we get first in line? I don't know. The crew just arrived. There were speeches. A lot of people are here today. Probably 95% of the people are here today. I would be surprised if anyone on board doesn't at least know what's happening. and I hope to meet those people if they don't. Oops. We just saw the aircraft being towed into the parking stand. A total of over 600,000 people tracked it on the way here. A total of more than 10,000 people. 10,000 people watching it as it pulled into the gate. So a lot of people stuck around to watch it shut down. Time to go. Let's go. Let's go. Last takeoff. Let's go. Runway three, zero, four. Log into the wifi so that we can send a featured flight alert, which is a curated alert that we can send to all of our app users who have opted in. So if you go into alerts and then tick that little box called featured flights, you'll get that notification as a push message in the app. And that could go up to all of our 60 million monthly users if the wifi works. So stay tuned. people tracking that's the last thing to load of course there we go so 4 528 right now 20 for takeoff 20 for takeoff that's okay console wi-fi i believe in you let's see if we can get 340 600 people to click on the push notification the most checked flights list has been full of the content in 340 600s and a few 300s for fun over the past couple days the inbound flight the The aircraft that we're on now, that came in before us, was tracked by over 600,000 people, so I can only imagine how much it's going to be after we find it, so we'll be more than happy to see that. So right now the top three most tracked flights on flight elevator 24 are all of the eastbound A340-600 spoiler tops, and it's no surprise because this airplane has an incredible history i mean starting when the a340 was launched it was a weird airplane the a340-200 was a weird airplane it was powered by hair dryers um the the old joke goes that it was an airplane built with five APUs but then Airbus designed the A350 or A340-500 which made the longest flight in the world possible for a number of years Singapore Airlines operated the A340-500 between Newark and Singapore on the world's longest flight which is now an A350 ULR and then other airlines came along and said yeah we want the A340-600 too so Lufthansa took delivery very early on Virgin Atlantic kind of made it their entire brand four engines for long haul and it was a different time admittedly but the love for this airplane and and the quirks of this airplane the the length 75 meters and change the the silhouette as it banks away from the airport and oddly the lavatories which on low cost aircraft are downstairs in the economy class and we'll take you down there in a little bit but the the love for this airplane while it is of a different era and while the retirement is very much deserved there's a nostalgia there and there are hundreds of people on board this airplane right now all feeling that and that's a little special to be a part of just look at the length of this thing at more than 75 meters from nose to tail the A340 600 was the longest airliner in the world when it entered service eventually losing that title to the Boeing 747-8 that incredibly stretched fuselage and those four engines give it a look that's pretty difficult to mistake for anything else the original A340 entered service in 1993 with Lufthansa among its launch customers. But those earlier aircraft were the smaller A340-200 and 300. The 600 came later, alongside the ultra-long range 500, as Airbus pushed the family into bigger, heavier territory. And this was much more than simply adding a few rows of seats. There was a larger wing, more powerful Rolls-Royce Trent 500 engines, and in the case of the 600, almost 12 meters of extra fuselage compared with the 300. It first flew in 2001 and entered passenger service with Virgin Atlantic in 2002. Lufthansa received its first examples in 2003, and would eventually operate 24 of them, making this one of the defining aircraft of its long-haul fleet. But commercially, the A340-600 never quite became what Airbus had hoped. Just 97 were delivered. When the original A340 was developed, having four engines offered real advantages on long oceanic routes, where twin-engine aircraft faced tighter restrictions on how far they could fly from a diversion airport. As those restrictions eased and ETOPS was developed, the argument changed. Aircraft like the Boeing 777-300ER could carry similar numbers of passengers over long distances with two engines using less fuel. And with four engines to maintain, the economics became increasingly difficult to justify. The A340-600 had arrived just as the market was moving away from the very thing that made it so distinctive. Lufthansa gave it a longer run than many. There was even a comeback after the pandemic, with aircraft brought out of storage to restore capacity, including those all-important first class seats so we've already enjoyed a bit of an encore but this time it seems it's passenger flying days at Lufthansa really are coming to an end although i couldn't make it onto the final flight i did manage to take a flight on one of these beauties last month and we got to fly the famous Canarsie approach into JFK so as a mid-flight bonus please enjoy what that looked like on a gorgeous day in New York no less Lufthansa flight was an A340-600 Hong Kong Munich in 2009, so this is kind of going full circle, like it's pretty cool, it's pretty cool. I mean the plane's been around for a little over two decades, it's gone from kind of the intercontinental sweet spot for Lufthansa to it might be time to say goodbye, and I think that you know this flight shows that people are ready to say goodbye but they needed to say goodbye and it's been really special to be a part of that yes absolutely no plane is showing its age but there's clearly it's it's a well-loved plane and time to send it on to its next life we're getting close to Frankfurt now and that means we're just a few minutes away from the last landing of a Lufthansa A340-600 carrying passengers i'm Frederick i'm flight attendant and business class on this farewell flight tonight we recognize a lot of excitement on the flight from the passengers they brought a lot of candy and some farewell gifts for us for other passengers and yeah you can feel the energy on this flight especially the last couple of hours and it's getting more and more exciting within the next one and a half hours because we're about to arrive in Frankfurt on this very very last A340-600 flight so stay tuned these flights always feel a little strange it's an airplane doing exactly what it was built to do something it's done thousands of times before but today when everyone gets off there won't be another load of passengers waiting to go somewhere and if you're watching this you probably understand why that matters to people maybe you worked on these aircraft maybe one took you somewhere you'll never forget or maybe you just loved watching that impossibly long fuselage and four engines lift off the runway some airplanes make you stop and look this was absolutely one of them minimum 50 40 30 retard 10 5. we understand why airlines are moving on the newer aircraft are more efficient and there's plenty to like about them too but we're still sad to see the four holers disappearing thankfully Lufthansa isn't quite finished with four engines yet we still have the A340-300 the 747s and of course the A380s to enjoy for a while longer today though belongs to the 600. so we have landed this will be very smooth landing we made it water salute plane is very clean now before it will be 10 to 10 tomorrow final thoughts fantastic i mean what a what a fun thing to be a part of what an amazing group of people to to travel across the ocean with and not only that but we had 871,000 followers on Flightradar24! That's a lot! That's fantastic! Probably, I think, a potential to be in the top 10 of the year. Of the year, yes. Yeah. So we'll see, uh, we'll see. Should we retire any other aircraft this year? We'll see. Let's see what we can get up to. If you are an airline and you're retiring an aircraft, let us know. And until then, we say goodbye from Frankfurt. Goodbye! So what happens to these aircraft now? The current plan is for this airplane and Lufthansa's other remaining A340-600s to be flown to Dusseldorf, where some of their cabins will be removed for use elsewhere. After that, they'll head to Teruel in Spain for storage. What happens beyond that, we don't know yet. Storage doesn't necessarily mean the end of an aircraft's flying life, but it doesn't guarantee another chapter either. For now, we're saying goodbye to their time at Lufthansa and to a very special sight at airports around the world.