Lufthansa in the Spotlight

In October 2025, Rea Garvey, Samy Deluxe, and Montez performed three consecutive sold-out and highly acclaimed concerts at the Hamburg Schauspielhaus, raising money for a good cause as part of the ​“Channel Aid – live in Concert” series. What does this have to do with Lufthansa? The three stars were accompanied by our orchestra. Since 2011, musicians from across the entire Lufthansa Group – from pilots and flight attendants to air traffic controllers – have been making music together. The approximately 70-member ensemble performs regularly in the Frankfurt Airport area as Lufthansa’s cultural ambassadors, but also frequently performs at other venues both in Germany and abroad.   

Countless stars have waved to their fans from the gangway of Lufthansa aircrafts. One unforgettable moment, for example, was when Alain Delon picked up Romy Schneider at the Nice airport in 1968, and the two posed arm in arm for photographers in front of a Lufthansa Coburg City Jet 737. Or how Hildegard Knef boarded a Lockheed Super Constellation in the 1950s to fly to the U.S. on a Lufthansa propeller plane for film shoots. And Lufthansa has even played a role in a James Bond movie: In July 1971, Sean Connery spent two days filming scenes for “Diamonds Are Forever” at Frankfurt Airport. If you watch the movie, you can spot a Lufthansa plane and flight crew in the background.   

In 1995, Mr. President’s dancefloor hit “Up’n Away” earned Lufthansa a gold record. How did that happen? The airline had produced the rap song together with the Bremen-based pop trio (“Coco Jamboo”) to promote a travel package of the same name aimed at young people. The plan worked: 300,000 copies of the record featuring the song were sold, and the hit stayed in the German Top 100 for 20 weeks. The music video for the song aired on the music channels VIVA and MTV and sparked a desire among the young target audience to fly “up’n away” with Lufthansa.  

In 2025, on a flight from Munich to New York, Italian illustrator and artist ​Antonio Colomboni drew inspiration from Lufthansa’s new cabin design and the innovative Allegris seats. “Travel has an immense influence on my creativity,” says Colomboni. “It stimulates me and opens my mind to new experiences and visions.” Thousands of meters above the Atlantic, he created a pop art poster in bold colors. It depicts a “cloudy” couple gazing at the sun and toasting each other with cocktail glasses – the piece was created in Lufthansa Allegris Business Class. According to Colomboni, this is the perfect place “to find a good balance between concentration and relaxation.”  

For years, a decommissioned Boeing B 707-430 stood on the outskirts of Hamburg Airport, where it was used as a backdrop for several films. In the docudrama “Deutschlandspiel,” made for the 10th anniversary of German reunification, it served as a fictional government plane during a visit by Mikhail Gorbachev to the GDR. In the comedy film “Bend It Like Beckham,” the then-16-year-old Keira Knightley “flew” on the plane to a soccer match in Hamburg. And in “Rocca Changes the World,” the fuselage of the aircraft was covered with decals to transform it into a jet belonging to the fictional airline Globe Airways.   

Prague, Rome, Budapest, or Studio Babelsberg in Berlin: numerous Hollywood productions take place in Europe. To ensure that these elaborate film shoots run smoothly, Lufthansa is also part of the complex logistics for many film productions. The airline often flies the actors and film crew back and forth between Europe and the U.S. multiple times during shoots lasting several months, or transports equipment to the film set. A key advantage here is the airline’s extensive route network in Europe. In 2004, Lufthansa Cargo even had the privilege of transporting the 12-by-11-meter Trojan Horse from Wolfgang Petersen’s blockbuster “Troy.” Disassembled into its individual parts and distributed across three cargo planes, it flew from the European premiere in Berlin to the Japanese premiere in ​Tokyo.