Lufthansa’s First A350-1000 Will Fly Munich to Tokyo Haneda on December 3, With Allegris Cabins

Lufthansa will put its first Airbus A350-1000 into passenger service on December 3, 2026, on a flight from Munich to Tokyo Haneda. The airline announced the launch route on October 15, 2026, and said Shanghai and Singapore will follow in the weeks after.

The jet is registered D-AIFA and named “Deutschland.” According to Lufthansa, it will leave the Airbus plant in Toulouse for Munich in mid-November, where the airline will finish preparing it for service.

What Lufthansa announced

Every flight on the three launch routes will carry Lufthansa’s Allegris cabin. The airline will not run the Airbus A350-1000 on them exclusively, though: it will alternate with the smaller A350-900, so a given departure may still be the smaller variant.

The aircraft took to the air for the first time on October 5, when, as aeroTelegraph reported, it flew for about three and a half hours from Toulouse. Lufthansa itself did not mention the test flight in its announcement.

D-AIFA also marks two milestones for the group. Lufthansa says it is the 700th aircraft Airbus has delivered to the Lufthansa Group, and the seventh jet in the fleet to wear the special livery for the airline’s 100th anniversary.

Heiko Reitz, the Lufthansa Airlines board member who runs the Munich hub, called the type “our new flagship.” He said it carries “40 percent more Business and Premium Economy seats” and that it “strengthens our premium hub in Munich.”

Inside Lufthansa’s A350-1000

Lufthansa’s version seats 300 passengers in four classes. The figures below are the airline’s own, from its October 15 announcement.

Cabin	Seats
First Class	3 to 4 (two single suites and one “Suite Plus”)
Business Class	49, including 8 suites
Premium Economy	35
Economy	212
Total	300

That puts 84 seats in Business and Premium Economy combined. Lufthansa did not publish the A350-900 layout it used for its 40 percent comparison, so the exact baseline behind that figure is not stated.

The -1000 is the longer of the two. At 73.80 meters, about 242 feet, the A350-1000 is seven meters (roughly 23 feet) longer than the A350-900, according to Lufthansa.

Power comes from two Rolls-Royce Trent XWB-97 engines. Lufthansa credits the engines, the aerodynamics and an airframe more than half made of composites with a 25 percent cut in fuel burn and CO2 compared with previous-generation aircraft.

Why Munich gets it first

Munich is where Allegris began. The first scheduled Allegris flight, LH476, left Munich Airport for Vancouver on an A350-900 on May 1, 2024, with Toronto added the following day, Lufthansa said at the time.

The A350-1000 extends that Munich focus. The group has ordered 15 of the type for delivery by 2030, and Lufthansa says the first ten will fly for Lufthansa Airlines from the Munich hub.

Tokyo has two international airports, and Lufthansa picked Haneda rather than Narita for the debut. AeroCorner’s explainer on Haneda and Narita covers how the two differ.

For Lufthansa, the A350-1000 is the largest variant of a family it already flies. Reitz described its arrival as part of the largest fleet modernization in the group’s history.

Lufthansa is not the first European airline with the type: AeroTime, citing ch-aviation data, lists British Airways and Virgin Atlantic among the type’s operators, with Qatar Airways the largest. Elsewhere, Qantas is testing its A350-1000ULR for ultra-long-range flying.