On June 17th, a Lufthansa A340-600 departed long-term storage. The flight from Teruel to Malta was the aircraft's first flight since going in storage in May of 2020.
The Lufthansa Airbus A340-600 departed Teruel (TEV) for Malta (MLA) on June 17th as flight LH9855. This flight departed at 12:49 and touched down in Luqa at 14:52 local time for a total flight duration of just over two hours.
The aircraft, registered D-AIHP, is 15 years old, having joined Lufthansa brand new from Airbus in 2006. Over its decade and a half in Lufthansa livery, the jet spent about a year-and-a-half in storage in Teruel from October 2017 to May 2019. After spending some time in maintenance from May to July 2019, the jet was returned to service. Unfortunately, the pandemic would limit the aircraft's commercial service time, sending it back to storage in March 2020.
The aircraft was flown to Malta where Lufthansa technik is located. Lufthansa Technik, as stated by its website, provides line and base maintenance services for short-haul and long-haul aircraft in the Airbus A320, A330/340 and Boeing 737 series.
Lufthansa Technik performs "The range of heavy airframe maintenance includes extensive D1-checks (A340-600) and D2-checks (A340-300) as well as narrowbody C-checks of high complexity. Today, the Airbus overhaul specialist in the Mediterranean operates six lines in parallel, with capacity for a seventh line available on demand."
It's unlikely that the said aircraft will be back in service in time to joined summer flights. The other A340-600s that were out of storage earlier typically spent one or two months ain Malta before coming back to regular commercial passenger operations.