Lufthansa Group Takes 20 Boeing 737 MAX 10s, Its Biggest Bet Yet on Boeing Narrowbodies

Lufthansa Group has exercised purchase options on 20 Boeing 737 MAX 10 aircraft, the Supervisory Board of Deutsche Lufthansa AG confirmed on September 17. The options came from the group's 2023 order for 40 737 MAX 8s, a deal that also included 60 purchase options spread across the MAX family. With this move, the group's firm 737 MAX order rises to 60 aircraft, worth roughly $3.4 billion at list prices.

Deliveries of the MAX 10 are scheduled to begin in the early 2030s. The jets will gradually replace older Airbus A320-family aircraft across the group, which Lufthansa says will cut fuel burn by about 30 percent per aircraft and lower unit costs by around 20 percent thanks to the MAX 10's higher seat count.

Why this matters more than the numbers suggest

For most of the past three decades, Lufthansa's short-haul fleet has been an Airbus story. The group flies hundreds of A319s, A320s, and A321s across Lufthansa, SWISS, Austrian, Brussels, and Eurowings. The 2023 MAX 8 order was the first time Boeing narrowbodies had come back into the picture since Lufthansa retired its last 737-300s and 737-500s in 2016.

Exercising options on the MAX 10, the largest member of the family, signals that the 2023 order wasn't a one-off hedge. It's a second supplier strategy, and it gives Lufthansa leverage over Airbus at a time when A320neo delivery slots are booked out for years.

The MAX 10 itself has had a long road. It was the last member of the family to be certified, and the delay forced several airlines to shuffle their fleet plans. That history explains the early-2030s delivery timing. Lufthansa isn't in a hurry, and it's picking up aircraft from a production line that will be mature and predictable by then.

Which airlines will fly them

Lufthansa Group hasn't said which carriers will operate the MAX 10s. The 2023 release was equally vague about the MAX 8s. The most likely candidates are Eurowings, which already runs a Boeing fleet of 737-8 MAXs on its leisure and Middle East routes, and possibly Lufthansa City Airlines or a future short-haul platform in Frankfurt or Munich.

What is clear is that these aren't going to Lufthansa mainline's premium-heavy routes anytime soon. The MAX 10 is a high-capacity, low-cost tool. It fits leisure markets and dense intra-European trunk routes, not the business-focused Frankfurt–London or Munich–Zurich runs where Lufthansa wants to sell its new short-haul cabin.

The cabin question

Lufthansa has said nothing about seat counts or cabin layouts for the MAX 10. In a typical two-class European configuration, the type seats somewhere around 200 to 230 passengers, which would make it the largest narrowbody in the group's fleet. The release promises "additional comfort for customers," which in Lufthansa Group language usually means a new seat product rather than extra legroom.

If these jets do end up at Eurowings, the newly announced Premium BIZ Seat, an eight-seat 2x2 cabin in the first two rows, would be the obvious thing to port over. We'll know more once Lufthansa assigns the aircraft to a specific airline.

The fleet picture by 2035

The MAX 10s are a small slice of a much bigger renewal. Lufthansa Group expects to take more than 250 new aircraft by 2035, split between long-haul jets like the A350, 787, and 777-9 and a wave of narrowbodies to retire the oldest A320s and A321s. The 737 MAX program is now 60 of those 250, which makes Boeing a meaningful second source but still a minority player in the group's short-haul future.

For passengers, the practical upshot is this: sometime in the early 2030s, you'll start seeing Boeing 737s in Lufthansa Group colors on routes that have been Airbus-only for a generation. Whether that's good news depends entirely on what Lufthansa puts inside them.