More than half of the new employees will be flight attendants. As well as its own blue-and-yellow liveried fleet, Lufthansa owns a slew of smaller airlines, including no-frills Eurowings, Swiss Air, Austrian and Brussels Airlines.
Some 2,500 of the new hires will go to Lufthansa proper, while 2,700 take up jobs at Eurowings. The subsidiary has been the focus of Lufthansa's expansion, as chief executive Carsten Spohr seeks to ward off the challenge from low-cost competitors like Ireland's Ryanair or UK-based Easyjet.
In December, the group received the European Commission's approval to buy up a large chunk of bankrupt competitor Air Berlin, including 33 leased planes and prized landing slots at busy German airports.