Lufthansa Airbus A319 Landing in Munich on a sunny and windy summer's day [AirClips]

Deutsche Lufthansa AG, commonly known as Lufthansa (sometimes also as Lufthansa German Airlines), is the de facto flag carrier of Germany and also the largest airline in Europe, both in terms of overall passengers carried and fleet size when combined with its subsidiaries. It operates services to 18 domestic destinations and 197 international destinations in 78 countries across Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe, using a fleet of more than 280 aircraft.
Besides the actual airline named Lufthansa, Deutsche Lufthansa AG is also the parent company for several other airlines and further aviation-related branches, including Swiss International Air Lines, Austrian Airlines, Germanwings and Lufthansa Technik. With over 620 aircraft, it has one of the largest passenger airline fleets in the world when combined with its subsidiaries. In 2012, the entire Lufthansa Group carried over 103 million passengers.
Lufthansa's registered office and corporate headquarters are in Cologne. The main operations base, called Lufthansa Aviation Center (LAC), is located at Lufthansa's primary traffic hub at Frankfurt Airport. The majority of Lufthansa's pilots, ground staff, and flight attendants are based there. Lufthansa's secondary hub is Munich Airport with a third, considerably smaller one maintained at Düsseldorf Airport which transfers to Germanwings, so Lufthansa only operates just around 10 destinations (excluding seasonal) which all have been transferred to Germanwings.
Lufthansa is one of the five founding members of the Star Alliance, the world's largest airline alliance, formed in 1997.
Having been a state-owned enterprise until 1994, the majority of Lufthansa's shares are nowadays held by private investors (88.52%), as well as MGL Gesellschaft für Luftverkehrswerte (10.05%), Deutsche Postbank (1.03%), and Deutsche Bank (0.4%). Since 1970, Lufthansa has involved its employees in profit sharing, giving them the opportunity to choose between cash and preference shares. When Lufthansa was privatised, employees received more than 3% of its shares.

The A319 is a shortened, minimum-change version of the A320. Also known as the A320M-7, it is 3.73 metres (12 ft 3 in) shorter than the A320; four frames fore of the wing and three frames aft of the wing were removed. The reduced seating reduces the emergency exits to six. With virtually the same fuel capacity as the A320-200, and fewer passengers, the range with 124 passengers in a two-class configuration extends to 6,650 km (3,590 nmi), or 6,850 km (3,700 nmi) with the "Sharklets". Four propulsion options available on the A319 are the 23,040-pound-force (102.5 kN) V2522-A5 and 24,800-pound-force (110 kN) V2527M-A5 from IAE, or the 22,000-pound-force (98 kN) CFM56-5B/A and 27,000-pound-force (120 kN) CFM56-5B7.[66] Although identical to those of the A320, these engines are derated because of the A319's lower MTOW.
The A319 was developed at the request of Steven Udvar-Hazy, the former president and CEO of ILFC according to The New York Times. The A319's launch customer, in fact, was ILFC, which had placed an order for six A319s by 1993.[65] Anticipating further orders by Swissair and Alitalia, Airbus decided to launch the programme on 10 June 1993. Final assembly of the first A319 began on 23 March 1995 and it was first introduced with Lufthansa in July 1996. The direct Boeing competitor is the Boeing 737-700.
A total of 1,455 of the A319ceo model have been delivered, with 17 remaining on order as of 31 March 2016.