Lufthansa on Monday flew its first Airbus A380 service between Germany and the United States, the new “super jumbo” jet landing at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport from Frankfurt. [Photos: Full tour of the Lufthansa A380 cabin and flight deck]
Lufthansa A380 D-AIMB's main landing gear touches down at JFK for the first time. (Photo by Eric Dunetz/NYCAviation)
Lufthansa Flight 400, operated by A380 registration D-AIMB Munchen, touched down under cloudy skies at around 1:50pm. The crew and passengers were greeted at JFK’s Terminal 1 by a modest ceremony thrown by the airline, with officials from Lufthansa, Airbus, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the City of New York delivering speeches on new plane’s impact on airline and airport operations, as well as the local economy.
Unfortunately, while the A380 was originally scheduled to operate Flight 400 on Mondays and Fridays beginning today (with A330-300s flying the daily route on the remaining days), Lufthansa today quietly pushed that plan back until March 27th. Reportedly, this may be due to Airbus delaying the delivery of Lufthansa’s fifth A380, to be registered D-AIME.
Trivia: This was technically the second Lufthansa flight operated by an A380 to land at JFK. The Airbus test A380 F-WWJB that landed at JFK in March 2007 was flown by a Lufthansa crew as LH Flight 8940.
