Lufthansa Direct Services and Germanwings to merge effective 1st 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 1st 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.