Lufthansa Cabin Crews Don Oktoberfest Gear

The company said in a statement that the flight attendants in traditional Bavarian dress premiered on a flight to New York and that the same costumed crew would serve flights to and from Washington, Shanghai and Tokyo. The air hostesses will wear dirndls, smocks with low-cut white blouses, while the stewards will don suede britches with embroidered braces or suspenders.

The costume switch will continue throughout the 173rd

Oktoberfest, which kicks off on September 16 with the tapping of the first beer keg and runs through October 3.

Lufthansa said that it had tried the stunt once before, in 1957, with blonde stewardesses wearing light blue dirndls and their brunette colleagues in pink.

The Oktoberfest is one of the world's biggest public festivals, drawing more than six million beer lovers to the Bavarian state capital each year. Its format has been exported as far afield as Kuala Lumpur, Taipei and the southern Chinese industrial province of Guangzhou.