The first route and ticket sales date has been confirmed for the airline-within-an-airline, Lufthansa City Airlines.
Ticket sales for the first destination will be on sale on the 24th of April 2024 with its flight operations commencing on the 26th of June 2024
Lufthansa City Airlines will operate out of its Munich home. The first three destinations that will move to the new operator are
- Hanover (Germany)
- Düsseldorf (Germany)
- Birmingham (United Kingdom)
Flights will be offered for sale both as direct flights and feeder flights to other connections in the Lufthansa group, with Lufthansa City Airlines being fully integrated into the feeder network of the Lufthansa hubs in Frankfurt and Munich
The airline has the YL IATA flight designator code issued to it, so look out for flights when booking your tickets through the usual sale channels
Fleet
To commence operations, the airline will utilise an Airbus A319, with further Airbus A320 family aircraft joining it (with airfleets.net reporting the airline has one active A319 aircraft and a further two parked currently
Lufthansa City Line in the future will operate the Airbus A220-300 (the second airline in the Lufthansa Group to operate the type), with the airline ordering 40 of the type to support the growth, along with 20 options. As its fleet grows, Lufthansa City Airlines will add further destinations in Europe to its network and gradually expand it.
Inflight Service
Inflight Service will be akin to Lufthansa mainline, with a two-class offering, onboard sales and so on.
In Quotes
Jens Fehlinger, Lufthansa City Airlines Managing Director Operations.
“Lufthansa City Airlines is contributing to the future viability of the hubs in Munich and Frankfurt. We are looking forward to new modern Airbus A220 and A320neo deliveries in the coming years. For our guests and employees, we are driving forward our renewal and thus strengthening Lufthansa’s planned growth in long-haul traffic,”
Reducing costs
Let us be honest, this has been about reducing costs from Day 1. And that’s fine – even if the unions are less than impressed with this move. It’s a move that has by airlines before – create a lower-cost base unit (or find someone to run it), staff it and fly with it.
It’s how regional flying works, as well as sub-airlines (eg BA Euroflyer out of Gatwick).
Hopefully, Lufthansa City Airlines can be used to strengthen the Lufthansa brand where the Eurowings brand might not be suitable (eg Business routes, Trunk routes) after the brand retreated to focus on serving Frankfurt and Munich only – leaving the rest of the network to Eurowings.
I’m more than interested in how Lufthansa Group will use this opportunity – given the Airbus A220-300 will offer it some very interesting route possibilities in the future, whilst providing nearly enough the capacity of an A319 they’re starting operations with.
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