Lufthansa’s Airbus A340-600 D-AIHX has departed Düsseldorf for Teruel, Spain, beginning the final withdrawal of the airline’s remaining four aircraft of the type from Germany. The nearly 18-year-old aircraft took off on Monday at 11:18 local time and performed a wing wave before heading to the Spanish storage and end-of-life facility, following the end of Lufthansa’s scheduled A340-600 passenger operations.
Düsseldorf had served as a temporary staging location for D-AIHX, D-AIHY, D-AIHW and D-AIHZ since 19 and 20 October. Lufthansa was removing components for recycling or sale before the aircraft moved into storage or disposal. The other three A340-600s were due to follow D-AIHX to Teruel by 1 November.
The final scheduled passenger service was flight LH419 from Washington Dulles to Frankfurt, which arrived on 19 October after departing the United States the previous evening. That flight ended more than two decades of Lufthansa A340-600 operations and the type’s 23-year commercial career with the airline.
The retirement is part of Lufthansa’s fleet renewal as airlines move away from fuel-intensive four-engine aircraft. The A340-600s are being replaced by newer twin-engine types, including the Airbus A350 and Boeing 787.