lufthansa's long haul flight from Newark, USA - Malta what do we know?

30th July 2021, a German carrier Lufthansa has launched flights for the first time between New York Newark in the United States to Malta. But before we look at more information during my plane spotting their, let's take a look back at the beginning of Transatlantic flights between Malta and the US.

Although Malta did fly to the US by PPE during the Pandemic once in a while by Hi Fly Malta. And in the past we had US Air Force planes directly from the US or US Air Force base in Europe. We didn't had any passenger service since the 2011 Libyan Cilvil War with Canadian citizens evacuated from Libya to Malta then cross the Atlantic to Canada. 

Let's talk about two airliner that did travel to Malta from the US. Balkan Bulgarian Airlines used their Boeing 767 aircraft directly from New York JFK in Summer of 1996. In 2000, ATA "American Trans Airlines" used their Boeing 757-200 registered N516AT however, it wasn't direct. The Boeing 757-200 can travel at least upto 3,900 nautical miles it can fly to Ireland and the UK without re-fueling. N516AT aircraft flew out of JFK with a re-fuel stop in Shannon, Ireland before heading to Malta. Both Balkan Bulgarian & ATA was wet chartered by Air Malta.

In 2021, Lufthansa has operated this service until October 2021 as LH488/489. The reason for this is because of tourism for Viking Cruises either Viking Sea or Viking Venues in Valletta Grand Harbour.

D-AIXL Airbus A350-900 delivered in 2018 taken 22nd September 2021.

From start to finish of the Viking Cruises program, Lufthansa operated Airbus A350-900. After Lufthansa finished it's second route back to New York, Lufthansa returned to Germany. While it was good to see we had long haul flights to Malta, this is going well for Malta's tourism post-Covid. We just wait & see in the future if Malta is up for another long haul travel in the future.