Lufthansa Group will be significantly expanding its tourist-oriented long-haul portfolio at its hubs in Frankfurt and Munich. After the successes of Edelweiss in Zürich and the deployment of the first few Eurowings long-haul aircraft departing from Munich, there will now also be flights available from Frankfurt, along with an increase in flights from Munich. For Frankfurt Airport, this means that, as of Fall 2019, Eurowings will be taking off from the metropolis on the Main river.
As a first step, Eurowings will offer flights from Frankfurt to the popular vacation islands Mauritius and Barbados when the winter flight schedule goes into effect in October 2019. In addition to this, there will also be flights to Windhoek in Namibia, with other destinations currently being planned. All flights will be available for booking as of 13 March 2019.
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From the Munich hub, Eurowings has already been successfully offering long-haul connections to a selection of tourist destinations since Summer 2018. In the 2019/2020 winter schedule, Eurowings will also be connecting the Bavarian capital with Bangkok (Thailand). Connections from Munich to additional flight destinations are currently being planned.
“Today, Lufthansa Group is already one of the largest holiday travel providers in all of Europe. Demand is increasing rapidly, especially in this area. It is therefore only consistent that we offer an additional product line in Frankfurt and expand our portfolio in Munich. This will help us to further strengthen our position.
Lufthansa’s feeder flights and the hubs in Frankfurt and Munich will make it even easier for our passengers to reach the most beautiful places in the world in future,” says Harry Hohmeister, Member of the Executive Board of Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Chief Commercial Officer Network Airlines. Lufthansa will support the marketing for the new Eurowings long-haul destinations with its global selling power and high-quality service processes on the ground. Says Hohmeister: “We have proven that we can successfully manage multiple brands and hubs centrally. We will now be employing this know-how more strongly in the tourism segment.”
This step goes hand in hand with a closer cooperation between Lufthansa and Eurowings at Germany’s biggest hub airport: “It is the right strategic step for the Group to combine the strengths of its two largest airlines in Frankfurt: going forward, we will be combining a product tailored to leisure travelers and families and the affordable cost structure of Eurowings with the sales and marketing power of Lufthansa at the Frankfurt location,” says Thorsten Dirks, Member of the Executive Board of Deutsche Lufthansa AG and CEO of Eurowings. “This makes it possible for the group to successfully evolve its portfolio for the growing tourism and leisure travel segment at Germany’s largest airport.”
For this expansion in the tourism segment, Eurowings will be using a total of seven Airbus A330 aircraft (with up to 310 seats), a portion of its fleet that is operated by Sun Express Deutschland. Capacities will be distributed evenly between the two Lufthansa hubs in Frankfurt and Munich.
