Lufthansa CityLine

If you have spotted in Frankfurt or Munich over the last few decades, you know the picture: a slender regional jet with rear-mounted engines, dark blue tail, crane – and yet not a “real” Lufthansa. Behind it was almost always Lufthansa CityLine, the group’s regional and feeder subsidiary. Its flight operations ended in April 2026. This page explains where CityLine came from, which aircraft it flew, what the A340 episode was about and how to tell it apart from the new Lufthansa City Airlines.

Lufthansa CityLine at a glance

Lufthansa CityLine was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Lufthansa Group, based at Munich Airport. Its job: bring passengers from German and European cities to the hubs Frankfurt and Munich and pick them up again. CityLine did not sell its own tickets for this – it flew on behalf of Lufthansa, mostly with an LH flight number and in Lufthansa colors.

That is exactly why CityLine was invisible to many passengers and all the more interesting to spotters. Behind the uniform crane look was an airline of its own, with its own flight operations, its own crews and a fleet that was completely transformed again and again over the decades.

From East Frisia to the crane: the history

CityLine’s roots lie far to the north. In 1958, two entrepreneurs in East Frisia founded a small air taxi service for the North Sea resorts, which later became Ostfriesische Lufttaxi (OLT). In 1974, regional traffic was spun off into a new company: DLT, Deutsche Luftverkehrsgesellschaft. It flew from October 1974.

Lufthansa got involved step by step: in 1978 with a good quarter of the shares, in 1985 with 40 percent, and in 1989 it took the majority. In the early 1990s Lufthansa took over the company completely, and in 1992 DLT was renamed Lufthansa CityLine. Since 1994 it flew under the Lufthansa brand – with its livery, titles and logo.

The fleet through the years

Hardly any German airline has flown as many types as CityLine. In the early years turboprops dominated, such as the Fokker 50 and the Dash 8; some Dash 8s and ATR 42s were flown for CityLine by the Danish airline Cimber Air. Then came the switch to jets: DLT was the launch customer of the Canadair Regional Jet in 1990, and in 1997 CityLine was regarded as the first European regional airline to operate only jets.

Type	Period at CityLine	Spotter note
Fokker 50	1992–1997	Turboprop of the early years
CRJ100/CRJ200	from 1992, CRJ100 until 2010	The first regional jet in the crane look
Avro RJ85	1994–2012	Four engines, high wing – last flight on August 27, 2012
CRJ700	until 2015	Stretched CRJ, handed over after a few years
Embraer E190	2009–2024	Later to Air Dolomiti
Embraer E195	2009–2022	Later to Air Dolomiti
Airbus A340-300	2015–2020	Long-haul on a wet lease for Lufthansa
Airbus A321P2F	from 2022	Freighter for Lufthansa Cargo, handed over in 2024
Airbus A319	from 2019	Taken over from Lufthansa, flown on medium-haul routes
Airbus A320neo	2023–2025	Brief stint, back to Lufthansa
CRJ900	until April 2026	The last typical CityLine jet

The foundation for the late fleet was laid by a 2007 order: Lufthansa ordered 30 Embraer E190/E195s and 15 CRJ900s to replace the aging BAe 146 and Avro RJ jets. The Embraers later left CityLine again and now fly with the group’s Italian sister airline Air Dolomiti. The manufacturers of the regional jets were Bombardier and Embraer. If you want to cleanly separate the E190 and E195 in old photos, the guide Telling Embraer E-Jets apart helps.

The A340 detour: long-haul with a regional airline

The most surprising part of CityLine’s history is the Airbus A340-300. At the end of 2014, Lufthansa announced it would transfer several A340s to its regional subsidiary. From 2015, CityLine deployed them on leisure routes with denser seating and in Star Alliance livery. The model was a classic wet lease: CityLine provided the aircraft and cockpit crew, the cabin came from Lufthansa, and the flights were sold as Lufthansa flights.

For spotters this was a curious combination – a four-engine long-haul jet under the roof of a regional airline. The chapter ended with the COVID crisis: in 2020 the A340s went back to Lufthansa. The article A330 or A340? shows how to tell an A340 from its twinjet sibling.

The end in April 2026

As early as June 2024, Lufthansa announced that it would gradually shift CityLine’s feeder traffic to the new Lufthansa City Airlines. An important background was CityLine’s old collective agreements. The union side fought the plan and went to court in November 2024. Lufthansa initially did not name a firm end date.

Then things moved faster: in mid-April 2026, Lufthansa took the remaining CityLine aircraft out of the schedule – reportedly 27 CRJs, effective April 18, 2026. The group cited sharply higher fuel costs and strikes, among other reasons. In its second-quarter release of August 4, 2026, the Lufthansa Group explicitly names the removal of CityLine’s flight operations as part of an optimization of short-haul traffic.

With that, an image that shaped German airports for decades disappeared: the CRJ in the Lufthansa look. If you have such photos in your archive, you now own genuine historical documents.

CityLine or Lufthansa City Airlines?

The names sound almost the same, the airlines are not. The distinction matters for your archive, because both fly or flew in Lufthansa colors.

In practice this means: if you see an Airbus with “Lufthansa City” titles today and LHX on the tracker, it is Lufthansa City Airlines. A CRJ or Embraer in the crane look in a photo from the years before 2026, on the other hand, very likely comes from CityLine. The article Callsign and flight number explains how flight number and callsign relate.

How to recognize CityLine in photos

Because CityLine has flown in full Lufthansa livery since 1994, you have to look for other features:

• The aircraft type: a CRJ, Avro RJ85 or Embraer with the crane on the tail is a strong hint of CityLine. It is not completely certain, because in Lufthansa regional traffic partner airlines at times also flew in a similar look – only the registration gives certainty.
• The registration: the CityLine CRJs carried registrations beginning with D-AC…, for the CRJ900 for example the D-ACN… series; CityLine’s A319s came from Lufthansa, for example D-AILS or D-AILT. The guide to aircraft registrations shows how German registrations are built.
• The ICAO code: if a flight ran under CLH, CityLine was the operator. In scheduled service, though, flights mostly carried Lufthansa numbers – here, checking against registration databases helps more than the flight number.
• Special liveries: the CityLine A340s wore the Star Alliance livery without Lufthansa titles. More on this in the article on alliance liveries.

Where to see CityLine’s heirs today

CityLine itself no longer flies, but its traces are still visible at German hubs. At the Munich Airport visitors’ hill and the Zeppelinheim viewing platform in Frankfurt you will run into the Airbus jets of Lufthansa City Airlines, which took over the feeder traffic. You can find former CityLine Embraers in the schedule of Air Dolomiti, which connects Frankfurt and Munich with Italy, among others.

The article on regional airlines in Europe gives an overview of companies that fulfill similar roles in Europe today. And if you want to fill in your old pictures, the guide Matching sightings with ADS-B has tips on how to cleanly reconstruct date, flight and registration after the fact.

Common mix-ups

• Equating CityLine with Lufthansa City – two different companies with their own codes; City Airlines is the successor, not the renamed CityLine.
• Attributing the A340 to Discover – the CityLine A340s flew for Lufthansa until 2020, and Discover only started in 2021.
• Taking every crane for Lufthansa itself – CRJs, Avro RJ85s and Embraers in the Lufthansa look mostly came from CityLine.
• Taking the flight number for the operator – CityLine mostly flew with an LH number; only the registration or ICAO code shows the real operator.
• Taking Embraers at Air Dolomiti for new deliveries – some come from the former CityLine fleet.

Conclusion

Lufthansa CityLine was more than a feeder. From the East Frisian air taxi company through DLT to the regional subsidiary with CRJs, Avro RJ85s, Embraers and even A340s, its history mirrors almost seven decades of German regional aviation. With the end of flight operations in April 2026, it has become an archive topic for spotters – one where cleanly noted registrations and dates pay off especially well.