Frankfurt Eurowings Discover was a confusing annoyance for many passengers right from the start. Because although the name of the low-cost subsidiary is emblazoned on the jets, customers can neither buy flight tickets for the long-haul airline from Eurowings nor complain about lost suitcases there. The core brand Lufthansa is responsible. This always causes trouble with the customers.
This confusion should end soon. Eurowings Discover will get a new name, the aircraft a new color. According to information from the company environment, the name suffix Eurowings is dropped, the Eurowings purple is probably giving way to a shade of blue – closer to the blue of the core brand. A spokesman for the group confirmed on request that the topic was being worked on. But he did not give any details.
Under the new name, the group management has some plans for the tourist airline. First, Discover should reach the black numbers. Launched in July 2021 – in the middle of the pandemic – Eurowings Discover had only flown losses so far. In the past year alone, according to information from group circles, the minus was around 170 million euros. For the current year, however, the management assumes a profit in the double-digit million range.
A company spokesman declined to comment on the numbers. Lufthansa does not publish separate economic data for Discover, it is consolidated in the core brand figures. Spohr promised investors a few weeks ago that all airlines in the group would make a profit in 2023. Last year, only Swiss and AUA managed to do that.
The now targeted profit is to be achieved by expanding the range. “We will be talking about growth at Discover this year, initially within the existing fleet,” Spohr said at a staff meeting in Munich in mid-May. The fleet could then be further expanded in the coming year.
Discover could get Airbus 350 and Boeing 787
Discover currently flies 22 aircraft, including twelve Airbus A330s for long-haul routes. With ten A320s, tourist destinations are again served on medium-haul routes. In the future, however, the daughter could perhaps also travel with long-haul jets of the type Boeing 787 or Airbus A350, Spohr indicated.
There has long been speculation in industry circles about renaming the offshoot. Actually, the new name should be made public in these weeks. But the appointment was postponed. According to company circles, Lufthansa management first wants to ensure that the important summer business runs smoothly.
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Last year, numerous flight cancellations and delays due to staff shortages drove many customers to despair. “At a time when everything is at its limit, taking out aircraft to repaint them would be counterproductive,” says management.
The name Eurowings Discover, which is confusing for many customers, is the result of a complex situation in the founding year of 2021. At that time, the group was still using state aid because of the pandemic. Building a completely new airline with the help of taxpayers’ money would probably have provoked opposition from the German government and the EU Commission.
The name Eurowings Discover should signal that the offshoot is not something completely new. In fact, there were already long-haul connections under the Eurowings brand. In 2015, the low-cost subsidiary recorded its own long-term goals. But the plan went horribly wrong.
At Eurowings Discover, management expects profits in the double-digit millions.
(Photo: dpa)
Planes were canceled because the fleet was far too small at the time. Due to a lack of equipment, there were sometimes massive delays. In January 2016, for example, passengers from Cuba reached Germany with a delay of 68 hours. In 2019 the management changed the strategy. From then on, SunExpress Germany and the German branch of Brussels Airlines took care of the long-haul routes of Eurowings. This in turn turned out to be very complex.
After the outbreak of the corona virus, the management initially stopped the long-haul routes of Eurowings. SunExpress Germany and the German location of Brussels Airlines have been closed. However, the idea of having one’s own long-haul airline with lower costs was not shelved.
Rather, the management started a precise analysis of why the strategy had not worked so far. One result: A business model like this requires great sales power. Eurowings is familiar with the marketing of short and medium-haul routes, but not with long-haul routes.
A second insight: A long-haul route needs a hub where the wide-bodied aircraft can be fed. Eurowings didn’t have that, the airline had to fetch the passengers themselves, which was far too time-consuming.
Edelweiss in Switzerland is the model
A look at Switzerland showed how things can be done better. There, Edelweiss serves long-haul tourist routes at the Zurich hub, fed with passengers from the Swiss premium brand. That was the birth of Eurowings Discover.
Within the group, the new airline caused resentment in the first few months – especially among the pilots of the core brand. Because Discover partly uses aircraft that were previously in use for Lufthansa Airlines and serves routes that were previously flown by the core brand.
The situation is said to have calmed down a bit by now. It is difficult to say whether the tensions between the crews of both airlines will increase again in view of the planned growth. In any case, CEO Spohr is certain that special market segments also need their own airlines with the right cost structures.
That’s why Eurowings was founded many years ago, he explained to the employees in May: “If we tried to fly short-haul routes with Lufthansa in Germany, we would either make big losses or the customers would be angry because we like the service would have to go far down that it is no longer Lufthansa.” VW and Audi are also not the same. “The customer understood that, that’s where we want to go.”
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