Lufthansa consolidates Germanwings and Direct Services in Cologne
19-Sep-2012 Executive Board decides to merge Lufthansa Direct Services with Germanwings effective from 1 January 2013
Lufthansa direct European services, which include all German domestic and European services outside of the Lufthansa Frankfurt and Munich hubs, will be merged commercially and organisationally with Germanwings to form one company on the basis of Germanwings GmbH from 1 January 2013. The company's headquarters will be Cologne.
The new company is to operate the Germanwings aircraft and the Direct Services fleet from 2013. In addition, the aircraft of Eurowings GmbH are set to fly on behalf of the new company, meaning that around 90 aircraft will cover direct services in Germany and Europe. In the first year, over 18 million passengers are to be transported.
Christoph Franz, CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board of Deutsche Lufthansa AG, said: 'As part of the Lufthansa Airline Group the new company will get underway with the accordingly high quality standards." The decision about the future brand name will only be made in the upcoming months.
'Combining our domestic German and European point-to-point services has enormous potential to improve efficiency. Our aim is to once again fly these services profitably under the umbrella of a single company. This means we are continuing to offer our guests the prospect of a dense, high-quality network even outside of our Frankfurt and Munich hubs. And our employees in these areas have the prospect of secure jobs within a company of the Lufthansa Group', Christoph Franz emphasised.