Lufthansa’s Eurowings Set To Debut First A320 This Sunday

Lufthansa’s Eurowings Set To Debut First A320 This Sunday

This Sunday, February 1, marks the first time that an A320 will fly under Lufthansa’s Eurowings LCC subsidiary.   The ‘inaugural’ flight will take place between Hamburg and Prague – departing Hamburg at 10:55a and arriving in Prague at 12:00p.  The aircraft will also sport Eurowing’s new livery.

 

a plane on the tarmac

D-AIZQ will be the first Eurowings A320 to enter service (Photo: Lufthansa)

 

Eurowings is part of a larger program known as ‘WINGS’ which focuses on the ‘leisure’ travel market and competes directly with other LCCs within Europe such as Ryanair, Easyjet, and others.  The WINGS fleet serving Europe and nearby medium-haul destinations will be comprised of an A320 fleet.   The A320s will be replacing the 23 Canadair CRJ900s currently being used by Eurowings.  In all, 23 A320s will be in the fleet.  12 will be transferred from Lufthansa and 10 are on order from Airbus.

Plans call for all of Lufthansa’s LCCs including Germanwings to be consolidated into Eurowings, which will ultimately be Lufthansa’s only LCC division.   This realignment should be completed by the end of this year and will feature destinations worldwide.

a close-up of a plane

LUFTHANSA Expanding Use Of BioFuel In 2015

LUFTHANSA Expanding Use Of BioFuel In 2015

On the heels of successful development and testing, LUFTHANSA is set to expand their BioFuel efforts to a new airport for 2015.

Beginning in March, Lufthansa will begin to use a blended Biofuel Kerosene on all flights that depart from Oslo, Norway.   This will cover nearly 5,000 departures from Oslo flown by Lufthansa, SWISS, Austrian, Brussels and Germanwings.   The blended fuel will be provided by Statoil, a Norwegian energy company.

Oslo will be the first airport in the world that will have continuous availability of Bio-Kerosene as plans call for 2.5 million gallons to be delivered to Oslo and pumped directly through it’s refueling infrastructure throughout the year.

As part of this long term development process, Lufthansa had previously tested the use of BioFuel on regularly scheduled flights between Frankfurt and Hamburg for a year and a half as well as on a long-haul test flight between Frankfurt and Washington DC back in 2012.

Lufthansa has been working on a BioFuel alternative for several years and during that time had run extensive testing on a variety of blends from several providers.   The challenge has never been the effectiveness or safety of BioFuel but rather finding a sustainable long term supply solution.   The key to BioFuel’s future success will depend heavily on Lufthansa’s ability to build a reliable network of suppliers who can source the fuel and meet stringent and consistent criteria as to it’s quality.

 

Invalid request error occurred.

Germanwings Strike Set For Tomorrow

Germanwings Strike Set For Tomorrow

Lufthansa’s low cost carrier (LCC) unit ‘germanwings’ will have its pilots walk off the job tomorrow, October 16,  for 12 hours between noon and midnight CEST.  This is just another installment in whats become an all to familiar scheme to get Lufthansa to buckle to the Union’s demands of letting pilots retire early, with substantial and perhaps unrealistic benefits.

Flights to and from Berlin, Stuttgart, Cologne, Hamburg, Dortmund, Düsseldorf and Hannover are in the crosshairs for this strike.

Germanwings has not yet published much information regarding options that will be available to passengers, etc.  If your travels include ‘4U’ tomorrow, please check on Germanwings.com throughout the day today.