Eurowings is teaming up with the Spanish low-cost airline from Spain to sell tickets.
(Photo: Volotea)
Frankfurt The Lufthansa low-cost offshoot Eurowings is expanding its European presence. In the future, the airline will work together with the low-cost airline Volotea from Spain.
In addition to the newly opened bases in Prague and Stockholm in eastern and northern Europe, there is now an ideal addition in the south, said Jens Bischof, CEO of Eurowings, in a video conference. Volotea has a strong presence in France, Italy and Spain.
The partnership is purely a sales cooperation. Each of the two partners will also sell tickets for the other airline via their own website from April. “What we don’t do is code sharing,” explained Carlos Muñoz, founder and CEO of Volotea. This means that customers cannot, for example, combine routes of the two airlines and book a continuous ticket for this.
“The operational and economic responsibility remains with the airline that serves the route,” said Bischof. Also, the turnover is not shared. For example, if customers book a Volotea flight with Eurowings, Eurowings only receives a financial contribution in the form of a commission.
That’s why they didn’t define their own financial expectations for the partnership, said Muñoz. Nevertheless, both sides see great potential in the cooperation. “It comes at just the right time in the post-pandemic recovery phase,” Bishop said.
As one of the first measures, Volotea wants to sell tickets for eight new routes from Germany this Wednesday. The flights will take place from May and October respectively. “Up until now, Germany has been a gap in Europe for us,” said Muñoz. From April, a total of 140 connections will also be jointly marketed.
Eurowings wants to grow through partnerships
Bischof wants to expand Eurowings into a pan-European airline. A little over a year ago, he opened Prague, the first foreign base since the start of the pandemic. A second followed in Stockholm. But growing on your own is not easy. While business in Prague is developing well, the Lufthansa subsidiary in Stockholm is having a harder time.
There, the domestic providers restructured themselves in the course of creditor protection proceedings and are fiercely defending themselves against the new competition from Germany. Eurowings has therefore adjusted its own growth plans there and is initially concentrating on the routes that work well.
The now planned expansion in southern Europe is significantly less risky and also protects the balance sheet of the Lufthansa subsidiary. “We not only throw material and personnel into the market, we also want to benefit from such partnerships,” said Bischof.
Volotea proceeds in a similar way. According to Muñoz, the company, which was only founded in 2011, cooperates with the Portuguese TAP and with Aegean Airlines in Greece. Volotea is pursuing the strategy of also offering the network model, which is otherwise only usual at large airports, at medium-sized airports. In this way, smaller cities could be better connected. This should now also be implemented in Germany.
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