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Hundreds of people witnessed the first ever landing of an Airbus A380 in Denver on April 30, 2025, and welcomed the Lufthansa aircraft's first scheduled service from Munich.
DENVER—Lufthansa has launched daily Airbus A380-800 services from its Munich hub to Denver, which marked the first ever landing of an A380 at the United Airlines hub in Colorado.
“About 70% of passengers from North America landing in Munich are changing aircraft,” Munich Airport CEO Jost Lammers told Aviation Week on board the first A380 service from Munich to Denver, on April 30. “Denver is a classic hub connection route,” Lammers said. “About 40% of Denver-bound passengers are changing aircraft there.”
The route has operated since May 2016 and became an all-year service when Lufthansa added A350-900s. “In 2022, United launched services to Munich with Boeing 787s. Since then, Lufthansa transported 1.3 million passengers, United 420.000 passengers—more than 1.7 million passengers between these two cities,” Lammers added.
According to OAG data, United will have a 33.6% share of the market, while Lufthansa will have the remaining 66.4%. According to Sabre Market Intelligence data, O&D traffic between the cities was 36,400 two-way passengers in 2024, up by 2.4% on 2023. Looking at traffic flow, there were 169,500 one-way passengers from Munich to Denver in 2024. About 66,300 of these started their journey at a destination behind Munich, while 24.000 traveled to points beyond Denver. Local point-to-point traffic was 12,700 passengers.
Munich is also a “sister airport” of Denver International. A cooperation agreement was established in 1992 to exchange experiences, personal and knowledge, among other areas.
Munich expects to handle 44 million passengers in 2025. Denver handles more than 80 million annually. “Last year, we welcomed 41.6 million passengers in Munich,” Lammers said.
Lufthansa has 12,000 employees at its Munich hub. There are 35 Lufthansa widebody aircraft based in Munich, comprising A350s and eight A380-800s. About 100 to 120 narrowbody aircraft are based in Munich as well.
“This is the very first Airbus A380 landing in Denver, which is very exciting for Denver and the entire Rocky Mountain region,” Denver Airport CEO Phillip Washington told Aviation Week on the sidelines of the welcoming ceremony in Denver. “We have two gates with two bridges for A380 operations. Denver is North America’s number three airport in terms of passengers,” Washington says, behind Atlanta and Dallas. “We handled 82.3 million passengers in Denver in 2024,” he says.
Lufthansa utilizes its A380 with a configuration of 509 seats. During the flight, Lufthansa A380 captain Thomas Jahn told Aviation Week that to classify Denver for full A380 operations, preparation work has been underway for the past two-three months. Lufthansa can use all six runways for A380 takeoffs and landings in Denver. Besides that, Salt Lake City has been selected as a first alternate airport; Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport is the second alternate airport in the region.
From Denver, a mile-high-city attitude airport, Lufthansa can operate its A380 without payload restriction, with only a few possible exemptions on very hot days during summer.
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