Lufthansa (LH, Frankfurt International) will keep flying the A340-600 during the summer of 2026, effectively delaying the quadjets' planned retirement, CEO Carsten Spohr confirmed during a third-quarter earnings call on October 30.

This follows delivery delays from Boeing of new B787-9s and the B777-9, the latter for which the German airline is the launch customer.

Lufthansa initially intended to phase out its remaining A340-600s in late 2025, pending the timely delivery and approval of up to ten B787-9s, but these are currently in storage in the United States due to seat certification delays.

"We don't expect ten aircraft (B787-9) any more this year, but rather probably around eight; six we have scheduled to fly. That's a minimum which we would need to achieve to not have any changes in our published schedules, and we're pretty optimistic to be above six," Spohr said during the earnings call.

"On the delays, or additional delays on the 777X, we never expected the airplane to be in operation commercially in '26," he said, "so we are scheduling the aircraft earliest summer '27, so there's no need yet to make any changes to our plans so far, and we'll see where it goes from here," he confirmed.

Asked about the impact of the US government shutdown, he said it "has an impact on some delays by days of the deliveries of the aircraft" but that certification paperwork with the FAA remained on track and the airline remained confident deliveries could be completed by year-end.

"Maybe even the last aircraft would already arrive with unblocked seats, but also quickly afterwards we can unblock the seats of the aircraft which are already across the pond in Europe," he said.

Capacity gaps

Lufthansa's published schedules show it will use the A340s to bridge capacity gaps resulting from the delivery delays, including flights from Frankfurt International to Boston scheduled from March 30 to June 14, 2026, AeroRoutes reported.

According to Lufthansa's latest interim report, covering January to September 2025, three A340-600s were retired during the reporting period.

The carrier currently continues to operate six A340-600s, four on transatlantic routes from Frankfurt to Boston, Detroit Metropolitan, and New York JFK, and two between Frankfurt and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, ADS-B data reveals. Historically, it operated twenty-four of the type, of which ten are stored since being withdrawn from service, ch-aviation fleets data shows.

On the airline's other quadjet, the A380-800, Spohr said it could remain in service for at least another five years. Lufthansa continues to operate eight of them, of which six are in service from their Munich base. The A380 fleet is currently being refurbished and continues to ply long-haul routes from Munich to the US (New York JFK, Denver International, Los Angeles International, Boston, San Francisco, and Washington Dulles), plus Delhi International and Bangkok Suvarnabhumi, ADS-B data confirms.

Regarding its A220-300 order from Airbus, Spohr said Lufthansa did not expect any delivery delays. "We just met with the Airbus management last week, so we are still confident that our forty A220s we have ordered for Lufthansa City Airlines will start to be delivered at the end of next year and will come on time."

Spohr said Lufthansa remains optimistic about its comprehensive fleet modernisation. "We have finally reached a point where we take delivery of a new aircraft more or less every week. Out of the total of 230 next-generation aircraft in our order book, we anticipate more than 50 deliveries until the end of the year," he said.