Lufthansa has seen ticket sales to the United States boom following the country's announcement that it will relax its current travel ban. New York and Florida have seen solid demand, prompting the airline to add additional feeder flights within Germany.

The United States recently revealed that it would relax its COVID-19 related travel bans for those who are fully vaccinated. After over a year of restrictions, many are keen to travel to the country once again. This has come as somewhat a boon to the aviation industry, as somebody has to fly all these passengers to the United States.

Demand triples

Since the US travel announcement, Lufthansa has seen a surge in bookings for flights to the country in the past week. On some days, the airline has seen bookings triple for some routes. Particularly in demand are flights to New York and Florida.

According to Lufthansa, the effect spreads across the group, with partner SWISS seeing a surge in bookings from Zurich. The wish to travel to the US also isn't differentiated between traveler types. Both leisure and business travelers have been buying tickets to get moving. As a result of the demand, Lufthansa revealed that it had sold more tickets in its premium cabins than during the same period in 2019.

Interestingly, the Lufthansa Group will operate more flights to New York and Chicago in November than to the entire Asia-Pacific region. Even at the height of the travel ban, North America was Lufthansa's most profitable market.

Upping feeder services

While Lufthansa's long-haul flights operate out of Frankfurt and Munich, the airline is very aware that it serves the whole of Germany. After all, people don't just want to fly to the US from these two cities. To increase connectivity to its long-haul services, the airline is also increasing the number of domestic connections that it offers.

Compared to July, Lufthansa will offer some 45% more domestic connections. This can directly be seen in the frequencies of popular routes. Frankfurt to Berlin will increase from six to nine daily rotations. This is still very much reduced from a year ago. On September 29th, 2019, Lufthansa had 19 rotations planned on the route, according to data from aviation experts Cirium. The airline will increase Berlin to Munich flights from five to seven.

To the north of Germany, Hamburg is also seeing an increase in connections to the German flag carriers hubs. The city's daily Frankfurt flights will rise from six to eight. Meanwhile, Munich will see an increase from six to eleven rotations.

In the morning and evening, flights From Hamburg and Berlin to Frankfurt and Munich will even operate hourly, giving potential connection passengers even more flexibility as to when they wish to travel.

What do you make of the surge in demand seen by Lufthansa? Let us know what you think and why in the comments!