A Lufthansa Airbus A340-300 will complete 15 years of continuous climate data collection when it operates flight LH405 from New York to Frankfurt on July 7-8, 2026. The aircraft first flew in service of climate research on July 8, 2011, on a route from Frankfurt to Lagos, Nigeria, with Lufthansa and Forschungszentrum Jülich becaming the first airline and research partnership to launch long-term atmospheric observation via scheduled flights, using the measurement system of the IAGOS program (In-service Aircraft for a Global Observing System).
Lufthansa Group’s involvement in atmospheric research dates back further still, to the IAGOS predecessor system MOZAIC, which was installed on two Lufthansa Airbus A340-300s and collected data during cruising flight from 1994 to 2014 – bringing the Group’s total involvement in atmospheric and climate research to more than three decades.
The group has since expanded its fleet of measurement aircraft. A second IAGOS system was installed on Airbus A330-300 D-AIKO in February 2015, now flying for Discover Airlines, followed by a third system on Discover Airlines’ A330-300 D-AIKE in November 2022. Up to three Lufthansa Group aircraft now collect atmospheric data daily.
The measurement system, installed beneath the cockpit, draws outside air through two probes built into the fuselage. Data is automatically transmitted after each flight to the central database in in Toulouse, France, at the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), a key IAGOS partner alongside Forschungszentrum Jülich. The data is freely available and currently used by around 400 organizations worldwide to track long-term atmospheric changes, refine climate models and improve weather forecasts. IAGOS is also one of the central pillars of the World Meteorological Organization‘s global aircraft-based observation system.
The IAGOS project is coordinated by Forschungszentrum Jülich and brings together partners from research, meteorological services, the aviation industry and airlines. It is funded by Germany’s Federal Ministry for Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR).
Since 1994, the Lufthansa Group has completed more than 37,500 measurement flights using the MOZAIC and IAGOS systems, contributing to one of the world’s most extensive datasets on atmospheric ozone and water vapor content. Ten aircraft operated by eight airlines worldwide are currently equipped with the IAGOS system.
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