Germanwings to no-one’s surprise.
Lufthansa is creating a new short haul budget airline to take the strain off the cost base off mainline Lufthansa.
The revised Germanwings brand will be used for point-to-point services on domestic German and European routes that do not cross Frankfurt or Munich Airports as a Low Cost Carrier. Services connecting in and out of FRA/MUC will retain the full Lufthansa brand.
The new business model will commence in January 2013.
Lufthansa group says the unified carrier would be:
“repositioned as a quality product – reasonably priced but not cheap – in the low-cost segment in an upgraded ‘new’ Germanwings”,
The revised identity and schedules will be released in December 2012 with a period of fine tuning of the revised brand over the next few weeks.
To support the expansion of the “new” Germanwings, up to 30 aircraft will switch from Lufthansa colours to Germanwings colours in January 2013
Will this work for Lufthansa? That’s a question I’m not sure I can answer…
One thing that will work out is the GhettoIFE 1st anniversary prize draw! And I’m giving away stuff for your stories on the worst food you’ve had on a plane! Head to http://economyclassandbeyond.boardingarea.com/2012/10/10/ghettoifes-first-aniversary-on-boarding-area-giveaway/ and enter for the chance to win stuff… that.. umm.. is nothing like what I helped gave away last week.
smart choice. create competition against AB and Ryanair while keeping their core branding intact.
What will happen to Dusseldorf, as a semi hub? I assume feeder flights into DUS will still be operated by LH? AS they do have a few long haul flights from there!?
DUS goes Germanwings for Europe/German Flights. Long haul will remain as is from the PR.
I doubt this is going to work. People chosing Lufthansa over budget airlines do so for a reason, because they simply don’t want that “cheap”-travel-experience with paying annoying extra fees and having to fight over seats. You chose branded carriers for a reason. Take that reason away – why would anyone fly them and not Easyjet or Ryanair, since LH will never beat their fares.