Lufthansa’s fast-growing subsidiary Eurowings announced that it will end cooperation with Austrian airline Laudamotion.
“We will terminate the cooperation on the due date of May 31,” a statement by Eurowings read.
The move by the German budget airline is a reaction to recent news that Ryanair will acquire up to 75 percent of Laudamotion.
Ireland-based Ryanair is Europe’s largest budget airline and hence one of Eurowing’s most important competitors.
Eurowings has been renting four planes from Laudamotion from March 2018 onwards in order to enhance its available passenger capacity on European and domestic routes. Given that Laudamotion would now begin using Ryanair computer systems which were incompatible with those of Eurowings, a continuation of the cooperation was no longer possible.
Earlier in April, airline Condor also ended cooperation with Laudamotion for similar reasons. Ryanair has announced a desire to grow Laudamotions fleet from currently 21 to 40 planes within the next three years, making it one of the largest budget airlines in Europe in the process.
Laudamotion currently operates 65 connections from German airports in Berlin, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Munich, Nuremberg and Stuttgart, as well as from Vienna and Zurich. The company mainly serves holiday destinations in the Mediterranean and on the Canary Islands.
