Plans in the works...
Photo via grow.spogagafa.com. After the disruption of flights following a series of strikes by cabin crew, could things be looking up for the German airline?
Lufthansa announced yesterday that it will be merging its short-haul and domestic routes (outside of those flying from its Frankfurt and Munich hubs) from January next year under a new low-cost airline. This will include routes currently served by Germanwings, a subsidiary of Lufthansa and will be based in Cologne.
The new airline (as yet with no name) is expected to fly over 18 million passengers in its first year of operation. Christoph Franz, Lufthansa's chief executive said “combining our domestic German and European point-to-point services has enormous potential to improve efficiency,” He added that “our aim is to once again fly these services profitably under the umbrella of a single company.”
Angry staff = angry birds
Photo via news.yahoo.com
Germany's biggest airline is still reeling following the strikes earlier this month which saw half of its flights cancelled in one day. The future is looking a little brighter with talks having resumed between management and union representatives. And with a new low-cost airline in the works to help them cut costs, they're hoping to be strong competition for big budget airline players like Ryanair and easyJet.
A similar path has already been followed by other full-service airlines - Iberia have Iberia Express and Air France-KLM have Transavia. Lufthansa say that they will unveil the name of the new airline in the coming months… German newspaper, Bild, earlier this year had already revealed that the new airline was in the works with the name 'Direct 4 You'. If that was the case, perhaps they had a change of heart - which is really no bad thing! Although they better hurry up with a name, it's practically October!