Speech of Mr. Joachim Steinbach, Lufthansa’s Vice President Sales & Services

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We are pleased to welcome Aegean Airlines today as our latest partner to improve an already major global network.

In the past decade, Lufthansa has consistently worked on developing its network that now enables our customers to reach 177 Lufthansa destinations in 73 countries all over the world. We do this by following the so called philosophy of seamless travel.

This means that we intend to make travelling as convenient as possible. We co-ordinate schedules, so that easy transfers are possible, we recognize frequent flyer miles from partner airlines and co-operate wherever possible to improve our service.

Obviously we have had a very detailed look at Aegean Airlines to see whether this airline would indeed be our preferred partner airline in Greece. And it is.

Our companies have enjoyed a great working relation in other fields in recent years, Aegean pilots; for instance, have long been trained at Lufthansa. Today, we are happy to announce our intention to start working together on the passenger side as well.

Aegean Airlines has made tremendous progress in recent years. From a small domestic airline, it became an important regional player. I can only support the view of Mr. Vassilakis that time has come for Aegean to start linking up with a major European player. I am happy it is Lufthansa that you prefer.

In our view the two airlines fit together very well. For nearly 45 years now, Lufthansa has been connecting Germany and Greece. With the increased importance of global hubs we were able to connect Greece with virtually all other continents.

However, unfortunately back in 2001 we were forced to cancel our own service from Thessaloniki. We are especially happy today that because of the new co-operation, we are now able to re-connect Northern Greece again with all parts of the world. And because Aegean is such a strong player in Thessaloniki, we are able to give a high priority to improving connections from there.

But, our cooperation will not only focus on Northern Greece of course. In the coming months a team of Lufthansa and Aegean managers will work on the implementation of this co-operation intention with a view to start the first code-share flight effective winter schedule 2005, that is October this year. Their first target will be the adjustments of the timetables and the offering of excellent worldwide connections, in order to better serve our customers. In addition further areas of cooperation will be analyzed. Exact details of this cooperation will then be made public.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I would like to thank the managers as well as the Board at both airlines for their support and enthusiasm to make this cooperation possible.

Thank you.