Come fly with Lufthansa! – Photo: Robert Schadt & Lufthansa

Roughly sixty years ago, on June 7, 1955, Lufthansa commenced long-haul service with a flight from Hamburg, Germany to New York City. To celebrate the anniversary, Lufthansa recreated a series of classic photos from throughout the years.

Safety first! Demonstrating life jackets – Photo: Robert Schadt & Lufthansa

How much has changed over the intervening six decades? Here are some fun facts, according to the airline:

• What began as two long-haul flights a week from Germany to New York, taking 20 hours for the trip (including a stop in Dusseldorf and a refueling stop in Ireland), has evolved and expanded over the years into the present 104 Lufthansa long-haul flights to 77 destinations worldwide, per day.
• With its four Super Constellations, Lufthansa carried 74,040 passengers in its first year of long-haul operations, with 18,420 of them crossing the North Atlantic. Today, Lufthansa’s long-haul fleet consists of more than 130 state-of-the-art aircraft, which carry over 15 million passengers per year – more than two-and-a-half million of them to and from the U.S.
• At the equivalent of approximately three month’s salary, the price of a transatlantic Economy Class ticket, back then, kept the experience of flying with Lufthansa exclusive, only possible for a small and affluent circle of people. Today, a round-trip Economy Class ticket for a flight with Lufthansa to the eastern United States can cost as little as one-third of a monthly salary.

Check out some additional historical photos, brought more up-to-date…