Low-cost airline «Eurowings»

Eurowings GmbH is a German airline based in Düsseldorf. It is a subsidiary of Lufthansa and has been bundling its flight offerings away from its Frankfurt and Munich hubs since 2015. Eurowings no longer positions itself as a low-cost airline like Ryanair or Wizz Air, but as a «value airline» with low-cost flights.

Eurowings Luftverkehrs AG was formed in 1993 through the merger of Nürnberger Flugdienst (NFD) and RFG — Regionalflug in Dortmund. Albrecht Knauf initially held 98.2 per cent of the Eurowings shares. Eurowings later connected some German regional airports with Amsterdam and Paris in cooperation with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and Air France. In 1996, about 500,000 passengers were carried on these routes.

As of 1 January 2001, Deutsche Lufthansa AG initially held a 24.9 per cent stake in the airline, which was increased to 49 per cent on 1 April 2004. As of 22 December 2005, a voting trust agreement existed between Lufthansa and a trustee of the majority shareholder Albrecht Knauf, by which a further 1.0001 per cent of the Eurowings shares were attributed to Lufthansa and it thus had economic control over Eurowings. Within the Knauf Group, the shareholdings were allocated to Eurowings Beteiligungs GmbH. The regional flight connections of Eurowings were marketed as Lufthansa flights, and the aircraft largely bore the livery of Lufthansa Regional — the Eurowings brand thus disappeared from the market.

Lufthansa took over 100 per cent of Eurowings on 13 August 2011. On 1 November 2011, the legal form was changed to a limited liability company (GmbH). The reason for the conversion was to adapt to Lufthansa’s shareholding structures. A wholly owned subsidiary of Eurowings AG was the low-cost airline Germanwings, which was founded in 1997 as Eurowings Flug GmbH and renamed Germanwings GmbH on 27 October 2002. Germanwings was sold to Lufthansa on 1 January 2009. The latter managed the company via Lufthansa Commercial Holding GmbH.

In January 2010 Eurowings announced that all Bombardier CRJ200s and CRJ700s would be successively phased out for economic reasons. This meant a halving of the previous fleet. In March 2010, plans were also published according to which the administration would move from Dortmund to Düsseldorf on 1 September 2010. A large part of the Eurowings fleet was already stationed there. Finally, as of 1 March 2011, the technical operations were also concentrated in Düsseldorf, and the aircraft hangar in Nuremberg was abandoned. Furthermore, it was decided to take over a further eight Bombardier CRJ900s.

From 27 October 2013, Eurowings also operated flights on behalf of Germanwings. On 7 April 2020, the parent company Lufthansa announced the discontinuation of flight operations by Germanwings.

On 3 December 2014, the Lufthansa Supervisory Board approved the Wings concept. Originally, the plan was to have the aircraft operated by crews from Austrian Airlines, which is why Eurowings Europe GmbH was founded in August 2015 with headquarters in Vienna. Three Airbus A320-200s were stationed in Vienna-Schwechat from June 2016.

In October 2015, the flights of Germanwings and Eurowings were bundled and have since been offered under the brand name «Eurowings». Therefore, the Bombardier fleet of Eurowings was supplemented by Airbus A320-200 aircraft. On 25 October 2015, Eurowings GmbH took over responsibility for the flights and is now the contractual partner for passengers. Germanwings has been Eurowings’ wetlease operator since 1 November 2015. Aircraft and the aviation personnel are thus used by Germanwings on behalf of Eurowings (ACMI contracts). Two A330-200s were leased for the long-haul route, which Sunexpress Deutschland has been operating under a wet lease agreement since 2 November 2015. In November 2015, Eurowings’ first long-haul flight took off with an Airbus A330-200 on the Cologne/Bonn-Varadero (Cuba) route.

In January 2016, critical media reports about Eurowings increased, among other things because of long delays and cancellations on long-haul routes. According to its own information, seven per cent of all Eurowings long-haul flights were delayed.

The parent company Lufthansa reacted in mid-January by setting up a task force. At the beginning of February 2016, a plan of action was presented that aims to reduce delays with more aircraft and fewer destinations, among other things. Flights to Boston and Las Vegas, for example, which had been scheduled for 4 May, were initially postponed by a month to 1 June, and flights to Iran were put on hold altogether for the time being. The flights to Boston started as planned, but were cancelled again on 28 August. Miami was added to the flight schedule on 1 September 2016.

In mid-May 2016, the airline entered into a new partnership with the Borussia Dortmund football club. This also includes transporting the team to Champions League matches, which was previously provided by Turkish Airlines. For this purpose, an Airbus A320-200 was given a special livery. This partnership is intended to raise the airline’s profile across Europe.

In 2017, the long-haul fleet was expanded to four aircraft. In July 2017, Eurowings launched a new long-haul service to Namibia. From November 2017, Eurowings flew to destinations in the Caribbean from Düsseldorf to replace the flight cancellations caused by the insolvency of Air Berlin in October 2017.

From the 2018 summer timetable, Eurowings took over the long-haul routes from Düsseldorf to Miami and from Berlin to New York from its parent company Lufthansa; it also added new long-haul routes as well as those formerly operated by Air Berlin, such as from Düsseldorf to New York JFK and Fort Myers (the flights were operated by Brussels Airlines). From November 2018, all long-haul flights were transferred from Cologne/Bonn to Düsseldorf. In June 2019, it was announced that Eurowings would cease long-haul operations and the fleet would be standardised on the Airbus A320 family.

At the end of 2016 it became known that Lufthansa would take over up to 40 aircraft of the Airbus A320 family on wet lease from Air Berlin. This agreement was approved by the German Federal Cartel Office on 30 January 2017. 35 aircraft will now be used by Eurowings, five went to Austrian Airlines. These were leased from Lufthansa for six years and have been used in the Eurowings route network since the 2017 summer flight schedule. Eurowings assumed the economic risk. On 15 February 2017, Eurowings took its last Bombardier CRJ900 out of service, sealing the end of Eurowings as a regional airline.

On 15 August 2017, Air Berlin filed for insolvency in self-administration. Lufthansa then announced that it was entering into negotiations to take over parts of the insolvency estate in order to continue operating the aircraft originating from Air Berlin.

At the same time, a merger with Brussels Airlines was planned until the end of 2020, but was abandoned in June 2019. From summer 2021, long-haul tourist flights are to be offered by Eurowings Discover.

Eurowings primarily operates flights to German and European destinations from its bases. Since the winter flight schedule 2019/2020, destinations in Africa and North America have also been offered from Frankfurt.

From November 2017 to early April 2020, German Airways (formerly Luftfahrtgesellschaft Walter; LGW for short) operated a number of De Havilland DHC-8-400s for Eurowings on short intra-European routes from Düsseldorf. The destinations included London Heathrow Airport and Paris Charles-de-Gaulle.

Other destinations will be offered by Eurowings Europe from Salzburg, Vienna, Palma de Mallorca, Pristina, Prague and, from March 2022, Stockholm/Arlanda under the Eurowings name.

Eurowings has codeshare agreements with All Nippon Airways, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, Lufthansa, Singapore Airlines, Swiss and United Airlines. Since October 2017, Eurowings has been offering feeder flights for South African Airways, as this airline now only serves the destinations Frankfurt, London and Munich in Europe.

Eurowings is a sponsor of the 1st Bundesliga football team Borussia Dortmund and the 1st Bundesliga women’s volleyball team Allianz MTV Stuttgart.