Lufthansa Cargo AG is a cargo airline from Germany, operating worldwide air freight and logistics services on behalf of Lufthansa, of which it is a wholly owned subsidiary. The company is headquartered in Building 451 of the Frankfurt Airport area in Frankfurt, the major hub of Lufthansa. Lufthansa Cargo does not only offer space on its own freighters, but also has access to the cargo capacities of more than 300 Lufthansa passenger aircraft (including Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines and SunExpress).
As of 2011, all Lufthansa Cargo aircraft are based at Frankfurt Airport, the seventh busiest freight hub in the world, where the airline enjoys a strong co-operation with Fraport, the operator of the airport. Cargo facilities at the airport are divided into two places (Cargo City North and South), of which the first one is nearly exclusively used by Lufthansa Cargo.
In earlier years, Lufthansa Cargo had a secondary base at Leipzig/Halle Airport, the European hub for DHL Express, from where it operated flights on behalf of DHL. Activities at this airport gradually came to an end following the formation of AeroLogic as a joint venture between Lufthansa and DHL, which henceforth caters for the DHL flights, allowing Lufthansa Cargo to concentrate on other services.
In 2000, Lufthansa Cargo was a founding member of the WOW Alliance, a global cargo airline alliance, but left in 2007 as it did not see any benefits for the future.
Lufthansa Cargo used to operate a hub for intra-Asian flights at Astana International Airport in Kazakhstan, but was forced to relocate it to Yemelyanovo Airport in Russia in 2007, because otherwise the airline would have been banned from entering Russian airspace, in what was described as an act of economic blackmailing by the Russian authorities.
In 2008, Jade Cargo International founded as a joint venture between Shenzhen Airlines, Lufthansa Cargo, and the German Investment Corporation, a German governmental entity, thus allowing Lufthansa Cargo for a stronger presence in the Asian markets.
In May 2011, Lufthansa Cargo opened another hub at Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in Hyderabad, in order to transport temperature-sensitive goods, especially pharmaceuticals, between South East Asia and Europe (and onwards to the United States).
As of October 2013, Lufthansa Cargo serves 57 cities worldwide with its cargo aircraft.
