The Lufthansa Group on Aug. 19 will launch its first flight with Wi-Fi powered by Starlink, starting with a Lufthansa Airbus A320neo aircraft, the carrier announced Monday. Lufthansa in January 2026 initially announced it would add Starlink to its planes.
The company also plans to roll out Starlink technology to its Swiss, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, ITA Airways, Edelweiss, Discover Airlines, Air Dolomiti, Lufthansa City Airlines and Eurowings brands, with a total of approximately 850 aircraft across all of the airlines to be equipped with the service by 2029.
The Starlink service will be free for all Miles & More loyalty customers and Travel ID users, across all travel classes, according to Lufthansa. According to the new terms of use for the upgraded Wi-Fi offering, customers must agree to always wear headphones when playing audio and video content, refrain from making voice and video calls and not broadcast live streams from abroad the aircraft.
Lufthansa NDC Update
Meanwhile, Lufthansa is seeing about 50 percent of bookings through indirect channels now coming through New Distribution Capability channels, a figure the company expects to see increase further by year-end, Lufthansa SVP of global markets and stations Frank Naeve said this month at the Global Business Travel Association convention in Chicago.
"One of the big drivers also now with corporates is continuous pricing," Naeve said, which can only be offered via NDC. "Our corporates see real value in getting access to continuous pricing versus [just] the offers that are in EDIFACT."
The company also has made "good progress" in the past year in servicing NDC bookings, to the point where "partly the solutions in NDC are even better than we can do today in EDIFACT," Naeve added. "We feel 2026 is really a breakthrough year on the corporate front."
Some Lufthansa partners have been able to "significantly reduce" the manual workarounds previously required to service NDC bookings, VP of digital retailing and order management Heinrich Lange said. The rollout of version 24.1 of the NDC standard has let Lufthansa "fully automate certain servicing workflows," he added.
"We've really taken out a lot of blockers, and that's why we now see adoption [from] corporates, and also the agencies servicing those corporates, jumping on the [NDC] train," Lange said. "We needed to create a certain level of reliability in our tech setup together with our partners. We have educated and implemented better B-to-B NDC servicing, so that if agencies have a problem with that, they can be supported by our helpline in a better way."
Lufthansa also signed a letter of intent this year with Amadeus to explore the next stage of retailing: offers and orders, the planned replacement for passenger name records.
"We know it's a long transformation, but the path is very clear," Lange said. "The conversations around NDC and the further progress are so important because we cannot afford to stay stuck in the middle. … To really bring the offer piece out and create that value already with NDC is just a stepping stone that we want to complement with order management being implemented over the next couple of years."
Separately, executives addressed joint venture partner United Airlines' recent pricing segmentation in all its cabins, including premium. "We are 100 percent aligned with United in the U.S.," Lufthansa VP of passenger sales for the Americas Dirk Janzen said, adding that "we've not seen any negative impact" on the addition of basic fares to the cabins.
Executives confirmed that Lufthansa earlier this year rolled out basic fares beyond the main cabin, including for business class.
"We have something that we've aligned within the joint venture, and then ... outside of the joint venture, we look to meet market demands," Naeve said. "And these basic fares really are not there to speak to corporate customers. It's much more for premium leisure demand. … When it comes to our direct channels, we make it very clear when somebody is buying a basic fare with a pop-up. … We need to make sure that our B-to-B partners, whether they be the [travel management companies] or corporates or whatever, that they then reflect that within their systems."