(Yicai) April 22 -- Lufthansa Airlines, Europe’s biggest airline, expects to add more capacity on China routes after it recovered to 70 percent of the level seen before the Covid-19 pandemic, according to its chief executive officer.

“The amount of traffic is growing,“ Jens Ritter told Yicai. “We’ll adapt our capacity towards China again, depending on the demand for major gateways like Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shanghai, and we are currently evaluating other cities in China like Shenzhen and Nanjing.”

Lufthansa’s capacity in Shanghai has fully recovered to that of pre-pandemic days, Ritter noted during a visit to the city to mark the 30th anniversary of the opening of the Shanghai-Frankfurt route.

The Cologne-based carrier has been resuming more flights to China since last year, and starting this month there will be two Shanghai-Frankfurt flights and one Shanghai-Munich flight a day.

“We’re pretty happy with the development on Chinese routes, and we have a seat load factor of about 80 percent, and sometimes nearly 99.5 percent,” the CEO added.

One of the main factors underpinning greater travel is China’s new visa-free policy for citizens of Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and Malaysia, which was announced last November.

But Lufthansa still faces many challenges, including acquiring more aircraft from makers Boeing and Airbus, as well as investing in infrastructure and staff to ensure high-quality products and services, Ritter said.

“I’m quite confident that, by the middle of next year, or maybe the end of the year, we will get all those aircraft we expected before,” he said.

Lufthansa is also investing more in digitalization to improve the quality of passenger services, such as installing automated check-in desks at airports and improving its mobile app to offer more services, including flight changes, he added.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Emmi Laine