A Lufthansa jet operating a routine flight to Africa had a very unusual route, adding nearly three hours to the standard flight time. What happened, exactly?
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Lufthansa’s Munich to Cape Town flight takes scenic journey
This incident happened on Saturday, October 25, 2025, and involves Lufthansa flight LH574, scheduled to operate from Munich (MUC) to Cape Town (CPT). The flight was operated by the one-year-old Airbus A350-900 with the registration code D-AIXS.
Ordinarily, the 5,681-mile flight would take a little over 10 hours in the air, basically flying directly south over Italy, Algeria, Niger, Chad, Angola, Namibia, etc.
However, on this particular day, the route looked a little different. The flight instead operated in less of a straight line, initially flying southwesterly, over France and Spain, and then flying the entire way to Cape Town over the Atlantic Ocean. The flight time ended up being 13hr4min, a little under three hours longer than you’d usually expect the flight to take.
While the flight was scheduled to land in Cape Town at 7:40AM, it really ended up landing at 9:58AM. Suffice it to say that this is very unusual. Often there are airspace closures that can cause airlines to avoid flying over certain countries or regions, but to essentially avoid the entire African continent until landing in South Africa? That’s not something you often see.
What went wrong that caused this Lufthansa routing?!
So, what happened here? Presumably Lufthansa didn’t fly this long routing just for giggles. aeroTELEGRAPH shares a statement from a Lufthansa spokesperson — “for reasons that are still unclear, the necessary traffic rights were not available.”
Aircraft flying complex routings like this have to file flight plans, and obviously the permission of a lot of countries is required (and some countries in Africa are known for being rather bureaucratic when it comes to overflight rights, especially when enough notice isn’t given).
But Lufthansa operates endless flights to Africa, so what went wrong with this flight in particular? While Lufthansa states that the reasons for this mix-up are “still unclear,” I have a theory. That October 25 flight was actually the first day that this seasonal service operated between Munich and Cape Town, as this is a route that only operates in the IATA winter season.
But here’s an interesting detail — the IATA winter season this year started on October 26, 2025, yet Lufthansa launched this route on October 25 (with the return flight from Cape Town operating on October 26). My money is on Lufthansa having only requested the necessary permission for the route as of the start of the IATA winter season, but then choosing to launch the flight one day earlier.
At least that makes sense to me, when you consider that every flight since then has operated as planned. Now, how such an oversight happened… that I can’t answer. To state the obvious, requesting the necessary overflight rights is the job of some people in Lufthansa’s operations center, so one wonders what the source of that mix-up was.
Occasionally mistakes like this happen. It’s no different than when American flew the wrong kind of Boeing 787 to Italy, causing a diversion.
Bottom line
A Lufthansa Airbus A350 flying from Munich to Cape Town had a much longer than usual flight. Rather than flying directly south over the continent, the jet instead flew almost the entire way over the Atlantic Ocean, avoiding land.
This was because the airline didn’t have the necessary traffic rights to fly over the continent. While the airline claims that this is for “reasons that are still unclear,” it seems pretty obvious what happened here — this seasonal route was launched one day before the start of the new IATA season, so I have to imagine that was the cause of this.
What do you make of this very strange Lufthansa routing?
So this route was planned instead of the computer selecting the apartheid/Nazi route without human intervention. The old South African Airways from the 1980's took a similar route except stopped for fuel in Cape Verde Islands.
The winter season permits were valid from midnight UTC onwards but the routing had them entering some FIRs prior to midnight, so the choice was made instead to fly an oceanic routing for the first sector southbound. The return later in the day operated just normally. The actual permits were issued in advance as normal.
Another factor: The German airports have restrictions after certain hours (noise reduction, etc.) so sometimes they gotta get in the air before like 11PM, or flight gets cancelled. Many of these Europe-Africa flights are redeyes, departure southbound in the evening.
It was either this or lock the doors and fly over Africa.
“Now, how such an oversight happened… that I can’t answer.”
I can - LH!
It's an overnight flight, as most flights EU–SA are (with the notorious exception of KLM southbound flights). There's nothing scenic about any route provided it's dark outside.
Have taken KLM to NBO and JRO. Beautiful views of the Alps from their 787 on the way down. And, if you can manage J, your selection of Delft Blue Houses!
I bet that even its fault of LH you will need a lawyer to get the EU 261/2004 compensation you are entitled for.
I love EU261, and wish we had an equivalent in the USA. However, because this route was over 3,500km, they may have needed to be over 4 hours late for compensation to apply. Either way, incredibly frustrating to be late, and if passengers can recover, I hope they do. This is also why travel insurance is still prudent; say this delay caused you to miss your connection to an expensive safari, losing $2500+ in prepaid...
I love EU261, and wish we had an equivalent in the USA. However, because this route was over 3,500km, they may have needed to be over 4 hours late for compensation to apply. Either way, incredibly frustrating to be late, and if passengers can recover, I hope they do. This is also why travel insurance is still prudent; say this delay caused you to miss your connection to an expensive safari, losing $2500+ in prepaid expenses; well, the EU261 compensation won’t do much, so it’s good to have a policy that’d cover your losses (be sure to read the fine print, because some limit coverage to delays in excess of 72 hours or 50% of your trip, which is absurd.)
No worries, LH is currently in the process to pull all administrative responsibility to Germany, so only the very qualified people around Carsten Spohr will manage such issues. You can lean back, relax and just enjoy the next fuck-up in style. (propably not in Alegris J though)
Those poor passengers, stuck for an extra 3 hours aboard a Lufthansa plane…
Do you know of any airline where 3 more hours on a 10 hour flight are not abysmal?
Well, yes! Qatar Airways, Japan Airlines, All Nippon Airways, Cathay Pacific, and Singapore Airlines! I’d say Air France but only in LP
Ray gets it. And, in J or F, obviously.
Of course in Y
Pity on all those people who had to endure 3 hours more in economy
Many African counties only grant overflight rights to premium airlines without FA unions and therefore no PDB and other service standards. If this were a premium airline it wouldn't have been an issue.