Wolfgang Raebiger, COO, Eurowings Discover at the CAPA World Aviation Summit 2022

Transcript

Wolfgang Raebiger:We started with the project early 2020, and really we are the kid of the pandemic. So we were born within the pandemic, have grown to about 22 aircraft in the meantime, and we are, you know, separate from Eurowings as an entity, and we are serving— we're complementing the Lufthansa hub system in Frankfurt and Munich with more leisure and touristic-oriented destinations. There is strong ties with Lufthansa, of course, because we adjust our networks to each other, but there is almost no link to Eurowings except for the name. They are short-haul point-to-point, very successful pan-European, and we're just focusing on the hubs Frankfurt and Munich, and with, of course, long-haul and short-haul destinations. Well, we have taken off and we wanted to have 7 long-haul aircraft by the end of next year, and we are at 22 right now, so I think it shows we have been a lot faster than expected. We have really taken the chance within the pandemic to, you know, get, get good stuff, get good crews on board that we could have, and also aircraft, surplus aircraft on board. And therefore we were a lot stronger than expected. Our fleet and network strategy is we are using aircraft out of the Lufthansa Group. We have 10 A320 and 12 A330s. We are flying to the touristic destinations like the Caribbean, the classical African destinations. But we're also adding now more leisure-oriented destinations like Florida, for example, Vancouver, Philadelphia, and others. So we are complementing touristic with leisure-oriented destinations. Our mood is pretty good. We're coming from this year not so much financially because of the burden of fuel price, but I think we have finalized our planning for the coming year, for 2023, and devoted more time into network planning, of course. And I think we have found a good, good network that will give us the chance to be profitable next year, which would be a full year 2 now for the company. And we are very much looking forward to still a high demand, and with the right supply, I think we should be well off. Thank you very much, Wolfgang.

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