Lufthansa Flies Its Last Airbus A340-600 on Oct. 18. After That, Only Airlines in Venezuela and Iran Still Fly One on a Schedule

The four-engine jet that was once the longest airliner in the world ends its German career on a Sunday flight out of Washington. The two airlines left flying it on a timetable are both under U.S. sanctions.

Lufthansa flight LH419 leaves Washington Dulles for Frankfurt on Sunday, Oct. 18, 2026. It is scheduled as the airline’s last passenger flight on the Airbus A340-600, and it lands on the morning of Oct. 19.

Lufthansa took 24 of the jets between 2003 and 2008, and only four were still flying this year. Once they are gone, the only airlines running regularly scheduled A340-600 flights are Venezuela’s Conviasa and Iran’s Mahan Air, One Mile at a Time reported on Oct. 15.

Why Lufthansa kept a jet it tried to retire in 2020

Lufthansa chose the A340-600 over the Boeing 777-300ER for its big long-haul routes. The deciding factor was commonality: its pilots and mechanics already worked on A340-300s and the closely related A330-300.

The cost of that choice was fuel. Airbus’s own figures, published by Leeham News in 2013, had the A340-600 burning 12% more fuel per trip than a new 777-300ER, with 475 seats on each over a 4,000-nautical-mile mission.

Four engines also mean four engines to maintain. As twin-engine jets were cleared to fly more and more of the long ocean routes, the quadjet’s case got weaker every year.

Lufthansa first tried to let it go during the pandemic. In September 2020 it announced 10 A340-600s would go into long-term storage and seven more would be retired for good, as Air Journal recounts.

Then demand came back faster than expected. In June 2021 Lufthansa said it would bring five back from summer 2022, citing demand for premium travel, and the jets’ eight first-class seats were part of the appeal.

Delivery delays did the rest. Late Boeing 777-9s, plus A350s and 787-9s held up largely by problems with Lufthansa’s new Allegris cabins, kept the old quadjets flying through the summer 2026 season.

The final call came on April 16, 2026. With jet fuel prices surging, Lufthansa Group announced it would retire its last four A340-600s and park two Boeing 747-400s at the end of the summer schedule.

The date moved once. Lufthansa had planned A340-600 flights through Oct. 24, then cut the schedule short, Air Data News reported, making the Oct. 18 Dulles departure the last one.

Airbus delivered 97 A340-600s, and Lufthansa took a quarter of them

The A340-600 first flew on April 23, 2001, and Virgin Atlantic flew it in passenger service from August 2002. At 247 ft 3 in (75.36 m), it was the longest airliner in the world until the Boeing 747-8 first flew in February 2010.

It was longer than both the 747-400 and the A380. Lufthansa’s version even put some of its lavatories down in the lower deck, below the passenger cabin.

Length did not sell it. Airbus delivered 97 A340-600s in total, against 838 orders for the 777-300ER it was built to beat. Here is how the whole A340 family finished, by deliveries.

Variant	Aircraft delivered	Engines
A340-200	28	4 × CFM56
A340-300	218	4 × CFM56
A340-500	34	4 × Rolls-Royce Trent 500
A340-600	97	4 × Rolls-Royce Trent 500
A340 family	377

Lufthansa’s 24 aircraft made it one of the type’s biggest customers, close to a quarter of every A340-600 Airbus delivered. Airbus announced the end of the whole A340 program on Nov. 10, 2011, saying every firm order had been delivered.

The jet does leave airline service with a remarkable record. The A340 family has never been involved in a fatal accident, a record that stands out in the accident data behind the worst aircraft still in service.

Why the last two scheduled operators are both under sanctions

An airline that can buy a new twin-engine jet usually does. The airlines that still fly the A340-600 on a timetable are the ones that cannot easily do that.

The U.S. Treasury designated Mahan Air on Oct. 12, 2011, for ferrying people, weapons and money for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force. Since then, U.S. persons have been barred from doing business with the airline.

Mahan still flies the A340-600 on long-haul routes. According to AeroRoutes, it has scheduled the type on Tehran to Bangkok three times a week for the winter 2026/27 season, from Oct. 25.

Conviasa, Venezuela’s state airline, was added to Treasury’s sanctions list on Feb. 7, 2020, and its fleet was named blocked property. On June 18, 2026, Treasury issued a license allowing maintenance and parts work on Conviasa aircraft, without lifting the wider sanctions.

Venezuela’s half of the story hangs on very few airframes. In June, Air Data News reported that Conviasa was believed to be flying a single A340-600, with two more parked.

That is not the whole surviving fleet. Germany’s Universal Sky Carrier flies the A340-600 on charter and wet-lease work, and more of the jets serve private, VIP and government owners. Those are charters and private flights, not scheduled airline service.

What Lufthansa flies to Washington after Oct. 18

The day after the farewell, the Dulles route passes first to the smaller Airbus A340-300, then to the twin-engine A350-900, according to Brazil’s Aeroin.

That is only a stay of execution for the A340 name at Lufthansa. The airline still flies nearly a dozen A340-300s, and they are expected to retire at some point in 2027.

Lufthansa will not be a twin-only airline yet. It still flies Boeing 747s and Airbus A380s, including the A380 that turned around over the Atlantic as flight LH415 and landed in Boston.

But the four-engine passenger jet is shrinking everywhere, a pattern you can see in how many Boeing 747s are still flying and who flies them.

After Sunday, a traveler who wants one more A340-600 ride on a scheduled ticket needs a seat to Tehran, Bangkok or Caracas. The jet built to replace the early 747 is ending up where so many old quadjets do: with airlines that have nothing newer to fly.