Essentials: Unusual Lufthansa Cargo Shipments from 100 Years of Aviation History

In September 2024, two Siberian tigers flew from ​Frankfurt to Kazakhstan on a Lufthansa Cargo freighter. When they arrived, the two cats were released into the wild in a national park under the auspices of the environmental organization WWF. On the subject of animals: the rarest creature ever transported by Lufthansa Cargo was the critically endangered red panda.

In “Troy”, Wolfgang Petersen’s 2004 historical epic, the A-listers Brad Pitt, Orlando Bloom, and Diane Kruger were joined by an unlikely but unforgettable “superstar”: a towering Trojan horse. After the European premiere in Berlin, Lufthansa Cargo dismantled the 12-by-11-meter, 12-ton colossus into individual components, distributed them across three cargo planes, and transported them to ​Tokyo for the Japanese premiere.

From 1972, the Jumbo opened up entirely new possibilities for Lufthansa’s cargo business. The Boeing 747-230 featured a nose that opens upward and earned the nickname “Beetle swallower,” as its fuselage could accommodate up to 72 VW Beetles.

Just one year after its founding in 1926, Luft Hansa had an extensive network and offered routes such as ​Munich to Venice or Berlin to ​Oslo. Following the 1927 Hague World Air Mail Conference, Luft Hansa even began transporting time-sensitive cargo, such as Dutch tulips, for the first time.

Artists, museums, and galleries – they all ship ​works of art. To ensure that these valuable items arrive safely at their destination, specially trained staff at Lufthansa Cargo handle the shipment. In 2024, for example, the company flew Claude Monet’s painting “Houses on the Bank of the River Zaan” from Frankfurt to Japan with stringent security measures in place.

All illustrations © Sylvia Neuner