At Frankfurt on Monday morning, a very long white airliner rolled out on the runway, slowed, and turned off for the last time with passengers aboard. Lufthansa flight LH419 from Washington Dulles had landed on schedule after eight hours and five minutes. With it ended 23 years of the Airbus A340-600 at Germany's flag carrier.

The aircraft was D-AIHW, carrying 267 passengers and 15 crew. In the left seat was Francesco Sciortino, a member of the Lufthansa Airlines board and Frankfurt hub manager. Spotters lined the fences, and every passenger was handed a farewell booklet.

The Pencil That Out-Stretched the A380

Lufthansa was the launch customer. It ordered the A340-600 in December 1997, according to Flightradar24, and the order eventually grew to 24 aircraft. The first, D-AIHB, was delivered on 25 November 2003 and entered service the following month on the Frankfurt, Buenos Aires and Santiago de Chile route. The last arrived in 2009.

Spotters called it "the Pencil", and you can see why. At about 75.4 metres, the A340-600 is roughly 2.7 metres longer than an A380 and was the longest airliner in the world until the Boeing 747-8 beat it by less than a metre. Four Rolls-Royce Trent 500 engines hang under its wings.

D-AIHW itself first flew on 3 December 2008 and was delivered three weeks later. According to aeroTELEGRAPH, it logged more than 66,000 flight hours across about 7,500 flights, which works out at more than ten hours in the air for every day it was on the fleet.

Why Four Engines Lost

The reason it is going is the same reason the 747 and the A380 are fading: four engines. Two modern engines with the same total thrust burn 20 to 30 percent less fuel, aeroTELEGRAPH notes. Lufthansa confirmed in April that the last four aircraft would leave in October, citing rising kerosene prices among its capacity measures, AeroTime reported.

The type had been kept on longer than planned because new jets arrived late. Its seats are now going to the Airbus A350-1000, more Boeing 787s and, from next year, the Boeing 777-9.

Lufthansa's own farewell film for the A340-600.

Where the Last Four Go

The final four, D-AIHW, D-AIHX, D-AIHY and D-AIHZ, are being flown to Düsseldorf, where usable spare parts will be removed, according to aeroTELEGRAPH. They are then due to move to Teruel in Spain for storage between 26 October and 1 November.

A few A340-600s will keep flying elsewhere, including two ex-Lufthansa aircraft with German operator Universal Sky Carrier. But for most travellers, Monday's landing was the last chance to ride the Pencil. In Frankfurt, a long, elegant chapter of the jet age just taxied in.

Sources: Lufthansa Group newsroom, aeroTELEGRAPH, AeroTime, Flightradar24