Lufthansa (LH) is exploring a new flight school in Portugal that would train pilots for Germany’s Luftwaffe, or German Air Force. Portugal’s government, Lufthansa Technik, and Lufthansa Aviation Training signed a letter of intent on June 9, 2026, to study the project. The plans became public on June 22, 2026, when Portugal’s official gazette, Diário da República, published the agreement, as the Portuguese news agency Lusa first reported. Lufthansa and Berlin are checking whether such a school in Portugal can train German military pilots, and the facility could also serve allied air forces, according to aeroTELEGRAPH.
The proposed school would run under the European Flight Academy (EFA) brand, which belongs to Lufthansa Aviation Training. The European Flight Academy has been the Lufthansa Group’s training pipeline for commercial pilots since 2017, and the brand already trains military cockpit crews, including pilots for the Swiss armed forces. No final decision has been made. According to Aero Telegraph, feasibility studies covering technical, operational, legal, and financial questions must happen first.
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Why Lufthansa Is Looking at Portugal for a Military Flight School
Lufthansa first raised the idea of a new European training site in March 2026. Lufthansa Group CEO Carsten Spohr confirmed during the airline’s annual press conference that Lufthansa and the Luftwaffe were examining whether a pilot school in Portugal could work, aeroTELEGRAPH reported. The German news agency aero.de later quoted Spohr from a May appearance in Frankfurt, where he said: “Wir suchen momentan nach einem Standort in Europa für eine weitere Flugschule,” and he named Portugal as a candidate location, according to aero.de.
One month after Spohr’s March comments, sources in Frankfurt said the topic was already under negotiation with the German Ministry of Defence. The Portuguese newspaper Correio de Manhã first reported that development, as cited by aeroTELEGRAPH. The timeline shows a steady progression: a public hint in March, ministry-level talks by April, a signed letter of intent on June 9, and official publication on June 22.
What The Letter of Intent Covers
The agreement signed on June 9 sits between three parties: the Portuguese government, Lufthansa Technik, and Lufthansa Aviation Training. It does not commit anyone to building the school. It opens the door to feasibility work. The next steps include the following checks:
- Technical feasibility, covering airspace, runway capacity, and aircraft basing
- Operational feasibility, covering staffing, training slots, and scheduling
- Legal feasibility, covering defence cooperation rules between Germany and Portugal
- Economic feasibility, covering costs and funding structure
Only after these studies finish will Lufthansa and the two governments decide whether to proceed. Lufthansa has not yet confirmed Portugal as the final site, aero.de reported, even though planning has clearly advanced past the rumor stage.
Who Would Train at the School?
The school’s primary purpose is training pilots for the Bundeswehr, Germany’s armed forces. In Portugal, Lufthansa would primarily train military pilots for the Bundeswehr and allied nations, aero.de reported, meaning the facility would also be open to allied air forces. This would not be Lufthansa Aviation Training’s first military contract. The European Flight Academy has trained Swiss military cockpit personnel for years, and Lufthansa extended that contract through mid-2030 in the summer of 2025.
Lufthansa Aviation Training already runs several Bundeswehr-linked programs in Germany. At its Berlin site, the company supports pilot training for the new P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, a Boeing 737-derived platform. Mathias Spohr, head of Lufthansa Aviation Training, told aeroTELEGRAPH that the simulators used are civilian systems. He added that fitting in military training slots alongside commercial customers has not caused scheduling conflicts, since the simulators run twenty hours a day.
Germany’s defence ties with Lufthansa Technik also extend beyond pilot training. Lufthansa Technik supports maintenance for German government aircraft and military fleets, including work tied to NATO surveillance programs, according to Lufthansa Technik’s own defence division pages.
How This Compares to Lufthansa’s Other Flight School Moves
The Portugal plan stands in contrast to a separate, recent Lufthansa flight-school decision in the United States. In early 2022, Lufthansa transferred its Goodyear, Arizona, training campus to United Airlines. The German pilots’ union, Vereinigung Cockpit, criticized that move at the time. Union president Stefan Herth said the union welcomed United’s continuation of the Goodyear site but warned against what it called Lufthansa’s departure from a “successful training concept.”
That episode shows a pattern of Lufthansa restructuring where it trains pilots, sometimes by withdrawing from a location and sometimes, as the Portugal case suggests, by entering a new one. The difference this time is the customer. Goodyear served civilian airline training. Portugal, if approved, would serve a national air force and its allies, giving Lufthansa a defence-sector foothold that sits apart from its commercial pilot pipeline.
Lufthansa’s Broader Role in European Defence Training
The Portugal proposal fits a wider trend of European airlines and their training arms working more closely with national militaries. Germany’s defence ministry has expanded contracts with private contractors for pilot and technician training as the Bundeswehr modernizes its fleet, including new aircraft such as the P-8A Poseidon and CH-47F Chinook helicopters. Lufthansa Technik is listed as part of the industrial team supporting CH-47F maintenance readiness for Germany, according to the company’s defence-services pages.
A Portugal-based school would give Lufthansa a southern European base for ab-initio and advanced military flight training, closer to favorable year-round flying weather than Germany’s own training sites in Bremen and Rostock. This mirrors why the European Flight Academy already operates a civilian training site in Goodyear, Arizona, chosen partly for reliable flying conditions.
All in All
No site, budget, or start date has been confirmed. The feasibility studies have no published deadline. Lufthansa has stated only that it is reviewing Portugal as a possible location, not that it has chosen it. The next milestone to watch is the conclusion of the technical, operational, legal, and economic studies referenced in the June 9 letter of intent. Until those are complete, the project remains a proposal rather than a confirmed expansion.