by Lufthansa Flyer | Sep 28, 2016 | Brussels, Featured, Route Announcements |
BRUSSELS has announced it will begin service for the first time to Yerevan, Armenia beginning with their Spring/Summer 2017 timetable. The new service will be a combination of either once-weekly or twice-weekly flights depending on the month.
The planned schedule is as follows, beginning March 31:
Brussels will operate weekly flights between Brussels and Yerevan throughout the year. Flight SN2899 will depart Brussels at 9:25p on Fridays, and arrive in Yerevan at 3:55a the following morning. The return flight from Yerevan will take place on Saturdays, operating as SN2900 and will depart Yerevan at 4:45a and arrive in Brussels at 7:45a.
In addition to this once-weekly flight, SN will add a second weekly flight in July and August due to an expected increase in demand for the summer holiday season. This second flight will operate as SN2899 departing Brussels on Tuesdays at 9:25a, arriving in Yerevan at 3:55a the following morning. The return flight will operate as SN2900 and will take place on Wednesdays with a departure time of 4:45a from Yerevan, arriving in Brussels at 7:45a.
Reservations are now open for these flights.
by Lufthansa Flyer | Sep 27, 2016 | Air Berlin, Etihad, Eurowings, Featured, LCC, Lufthansa |
Over the past few weeks it was quite obvious that Air Berlin was in ‘perilous peril’. News starting coming from Germany that Etihad was no longer happy with their stake in Air Berlin and was even looking at ways to divest of their ‘mistake’. At the top of most headlines was the fact that Lufthansa was prepared to take advantage of AB’s weakness and takeover aircraft and routes while Air Berlin restructured their operations.
With the latest news from Germany on Monday, we now gain clarity and confirmation of what has been discussed previously.
People in Europe were waking up to headlines that Air Berlin indeed will be restructuring operations in an attempt to return to profitability. Leading the list of changes is the elimination of over 1,000 jobs and reduction of its fleet of 127 aircraft to only 70 by the end of this year.
To dovetail this announcement, Lufthansa has been planning for this and had previously offered to assume control of 40 of Air Berlin’s aircraft and operate most of the Air Berlin routes that do not serve Dusseldorf or Berlin, both of which are major AB hubs. LH will ‘wet lease’ the aircraft and crews from AB and will operate them under ‘Eurowings’, LH’s Low Cost Carrier unit. What this means is Air Berlin is guaranteed to receive ‘rent’ for the aircraft, but Lufthansa gets to keep profits, or absorb losses.
In addition to the aircraft that Lufthansa will take over, it appears that Air Berlin will also sell 17 of their birds currently owned by ‘Niki’ to TUIFly. ‘Niki’ is an Austrian based subsidiary of Air Berlin.
The timing of the implosion of Air Berlin couldn’t have happened at a better time for Lufthansa. At the top of LH Group’s priority list for 2016 was to make sure that Eurowings would be set up for success and become accretive to Group’s balance sheet. So far success has been muted for a variety of reasons including the fact that the fleet is a bit undersized, uber aggressive competition from competitors, and a change in consumer sentiment in Europe that has fewer people thinking about travel.
With the injection of 40 aircraft, new routes, and broader coverage Lufthansa has the opportunity to make Eurowings what it is supposed to be, which is a low cost option for passengers to travel to destinations not usually served by mainline carriers. At this moment, Eurowings only has 33 aircraft in the fleet making it difficult to reach their goal. With the influx of 40 new aircraft, crew and hundreds of new flights, EW will have literally doubled in size over night without much effort or substantial risk.
Eurowings now has the opportunity to finally meet the expectations that everyone had for it. However the expectations may have doubled as well!
Lufthansa Group’s Supervisory Board is scheduled to meet Wednesday, September 27 to review and vote on the proposal for bailing out Air Berlin. It’s expected to be approved unanimously so expected another announcement in the coming days that confirms what we already know.
by Lufthansa Flyer | Sep 24, 2016 | Featured, Mileage Plus, United |
United’s latest mile sale for Mileage Plus comes to an end at midnight on September 26. Between now and then, you can save up to 30% on the miles you need.
Specifically:
Buy 5,000 – 14,000 miles and save 15%
Buy 15,000 – 29,000 miles and save 20%
Buy 30,000 -150,000 miles and save 30%
Remember, you can buy up to a maximum 150,000 miles a year per account. They have a pretty good rate of return when they convert into First Class tickets on Lufthansa!
