Lufthansa (Deutsche Lufthansa AG) is the largest German airline company, headquartered in Cologne. Their main base is at Frankfurt International Airport in Frankfurt am Main which is also Lufthansa's primary traffic hub. The company has developed a second hub at Munich's Franz Josef Strauß International Airport. In the future after merging with SWISS, the Zurich Airport will be also a main traffic hub.

Lufthansa is a founding member of Star Alliance, one of the world's major airline alliances. The Lufthansa Group operates more than 300 aircraft and employs about 97,000 people world-wide.

The company was founded in 1926 and headquartered in Berlin, following a merger between "Deutsche Aero Lloyd" (DAL) and "Junkers Luftverkehr" on January 6 of that year. The company's original full name was Deutsche Luft Hansa Aktiengesellschaft. The name Lufthansa derives from Luft (the German word for "air") and Hansa (the Hanseatic trade organization that was mainly active in Northern Europe during the medieval times).

In the 1950s East Germany attempted to establish its own airline using the Lufthansa name, but this resulted in a dispute with West Germany, where the airline had been already re-established after the Second World War. East Germany instead called its national airline Interflug, which ceased operations in 1991. Lufthansa was banned from flying into West Berlin until the demise of the communist regime.

Lufthansa was the launch customer of the Boeing 737 aircraft, and the only buyers of new 737-100s. By doing so, Lufthansa became the first foreign launch customer for a Boeing commercial plane. On 17 May 2004, Lufthansa became the launch customer for Boeing's Connexion in-flight online connectivity service.

In June 2003 Lufthansa opened new Terminal 2 at Munich's Franz Josef Strauß Airport (MUC) to relieve its main hub, Frankfurt (FRA), which is plagued with capacity constraints. It is one of the first terminals in Europe partially owned by an airline.

On 22 March 2005 SWISS merged with Lufthansa Airlines. The deal consists of Lufthansa offering public shareholders the average price over the weeks prior to the announcement. The majority shareholders (the Swiss government and large Swiss companies) will be offered payment if Lufthansa's share price outperforms an airline index during the years following the merger.