For Lufthansa bright skies ahead

By Anna Arzanova

Since it started flights to Georgia in June, Lufthansa has enjoyed success in growing passenger numbers and could even expand its activity in the country in the near future, company officials report.
General Director of Lufthansa in Tbilisi Stefan Schwarz stated that the high season for passengers lasted for longer than expected since inaugurating flights on June 5, 2005 and noted Lufthansa has had a "very good" passenger load over the full summer period. "Our flights were successfully booked from the beginning, even the high season which was expected to ends in August," he stated in a recent interview with the paper in Munich.
"Traffic is picking up for Christmas season and winter holidays as well," Schwarz added.
"Depending on passengers' demand, we are going to increase our services either by frequencies or by the size of the aircraft capacity. But this is something that will be shown a little bit later. We need a full season for that to see how all the developments of passenger will go," Schwarz said.
Schwarz said that Lufthansa has developed a highly qualified staff not only in Europe but in Georgia as well. "We hire local Georgian employees, who are being trained in our international center in Germany, in check in, ticketing and so on. We take utmost interest to maker sure that colleagues are well-qualified in all the services," he stressed.
Speaking about the future plans and possible expansion of Lufthansa's branches, Schwarz underscored the success of Lufthansa's three flights weekly between Tbilisi and Munich, a hub for the airline which allows passengers to connected to any other Lufthansa destination.
Schwarz, 41, took on the new position of Lufthansa General Director in Tbilisi in June 2005. Schwarz had studied economics in Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, and management in Hagen, Germany. From 1986 to 1989 Mr. Schwarz studied at Lufthansa special aviation management courses. In addition to his professional activities at Lufthansa, in 2003 Mr. Schwarz finished MBA courses at Danube University in Krems, Austria specializing in aviation.