Germanwings

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Germanwings GmbH
Germanwings logo
Germanwings Airbus A319-100
IATA code : 4U
ICAO code : GWI
Call sign : GERMANWINGS
Founding: 1996
Operation stopped: 2020
Seat: Cologne , GermanyGermanyGermany 
Home airport : Cologne / Bonn
Company form: GmbH
Management: Thorsten Dirks (Chairman of the Supervisory Board )
Number of employees: 2073 (2014)
Sales: 1.8 billion euros (2013)
Passenger volume: 16 million (2013)
Frequent Flyer Program :
Fleet size: 34
Aims: National and international
Website: www.eurowings.com
Germanwings GmbH ceased operations in 2020. The information in italics refer to the last status before the end of operation.

Germanwings is a German low-cost airline based in Cologne and based at Cologne / Bonn Airport and has currently been in processing since April 2020 . Flight operations ceased on March 24, 2020. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Deutsche Lufthansa AG . As of October 25, 2015, Germanwings was no longer an independent airline; instead, Eurowings assumed economic responsibility and from then on offered all short and long-haul offers under its brand, while Germanwings carried out the flight operations on behalf of Eurowings. Lufthansa announced on April 7, 2020 that Germanwings would permanently suspend flight operations.

history

Germanwings logo used from 2002 to 2013

Years as part of Eurowings

Germanwings was founded in 1996 under the name Eurowings Flug GmbH as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Eurowings Luftverkehrs AG and renamed Germanwings GmbH in 2002 . Flight operations commenced on October 27, 2002 with five Airbus A319-100 previously used in charter traffic from Cologne / Bonn Airport . At this point in time, Lufthansa held a 24.9% stake in Eurowings, with an option taken later to increase this stake to 49% by 2004.

In September 2003, Germanwings opened a second base with initially two aircraft at Stuttgart Airport and was thus able to offer 30 different connections, ten of them from Stuttgart. In 2004, 38% of the passengers were business travelers, 26% were on a city trip and 21% were visiting friends and relatives. The most important sales channel was the internet with 93% of bookings.

In 2010 Germanwings opened another base at Hanover-Langenhagen Airport . There she stationed three A319-100s and flew directly to 18 destinations . Germanwings is now the third largest airline at Hanover Airport.

From 2005 there was a voting agreement with a trustee of the Eurowings main shareholder Albrecht Knauf , through which Lufthansa controlled a further 1,0001% of the Eurowings shares and thus Eurowings AG .

A planned merger of Germanwings with Condor and TUIfly failed in 2008 due to differing views on the merger's structure. At its meeting on December 8, 2008, the Eurowings Supervisory Board approved the sale of all of Eurowings' shares in Germanwings with effect from January 1, 2009 to Deutsche Lufthansa AG . Since then, it has managed this under the umbrella of Lufthansa Commercial Holding . In the meantime, the route network and the fleet have also been expanded, for example with flights between Munich and Berlin-Schönefeld or Cologne / Bonn and London-Stansted .

Takeover by Lufthansa

Airbus A319-100 in old (front) and new livery

In 2011 Lufthansa announced that it would hand over all European Lufthansa connections at Stuttgart Airport to Germanwings in the course of 2012; the domestic German connections initially remained with Lufthansa. This division was a blueprint for other locations. In December 2012, Germanwings announced extensive restructuring under the motto “The new Germanwings” with a corporate design more closely related to the parent company , which was introduced from July 1, 2013. Germanwings received aircraft from the parent company, took over domestic German and intra-European flights for Lufthansa outside its hubs in Frankfurt am Main and Munich and has been operating Eurowings flights ever since .

Germanwings moved from Berlin-Schönefeld to Berlin-Tegel in order to enable closer networking with Lufthansa. From January 2015, all direct Lufthansa traffic outside the Frankfurt am Main and Munich airports was operated by Germanwings. The last route operated by Lufthansa, the connection from Düsseldorf to Zurich was handed over to Germanwings in January 2015. After the Germanwings pilots had been on strike for three days in April 2014, they stopped working again on August 29, 2014 in order to maintain the in-house retirement option at 55 years of age at the earliest and up to 60% of their last earnings. Another strike on the matter took place in October 2014.

Eurowings wet lease operator

On December 3, 2014 Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr announced that there would be further restructuring in the low-cost segment. After a meeting of the supervisory board, he announced that Germanwings would operate exclusively on behalf of Eurowings with an existing fleet of 60 short and medium-haul aircraft at German airports, with the exception of Munich and Frankfurt. According to Spohr, Germanwings was a success, but Eurowings could save more costs and secure more money for future investments. The collective agreement will not change for the pilots and cabin crew at Germanwings. Only the pilots or flight attendants who switch to Eurowings are paid a lower wage. However, due to pilot strikes, the collective bargaining agreements at Eurowings may still have to be negotiated.

On October 25, 2015, Eurowings GmbH took over economic responsibility for flights and is now the contractual partner of the passengers. From November 1, 2015, Germanwings will be the wet lease operator of Eurowings.

Since the 2017 winter flight schedule, Germanwings has only operated flights under Eurowings flight numbers. The own IATA code 4U or ICAO code GWI was only used for empty flights.

completion

Since the end of 2017, Deutsche Lufthansa AG has been pursuing a "One AOC policy" at its subsidiaries. The operation of Germanwings was to be transferred to the operation of Eurowings . However, this goal, which was given for implementation at short notice, failed due to the legal framework of the LBA and group collective agreements, so that there was originally a "grandfathering" for Germanwings until June 2022.

In the course of the economic crisis in 2020 , the Eurowings flight schedule was reduced by 90% and the entire Germanwings fleet was shut down. On April 2, 2020, it was announced that the Lufthansa Group was considering winding up Germanwings. The option negotiated with the trade unions and employee representatives to apply for short-time work allowance and thus protection against dismissal for the employees was not used by the Lufthansa Group. On April 6, the unions demanded that restructuring measures only be decided by mutual agreement and appealed to the decision-makers of the Lufthansa Group, accompanied by an online petition , to receive Germanwings.

On April 7, 2020 Lufthansa announced that it would not resume Germanwings flight operations. As many employees as possible should be able to switch to other Lufthansa Group companies. The last passenger flight from Germanwings on behalf of Eurowings was EW1979, which landed in Munich on March 24, 2020 at 10:06 p.m. from Hamburg . It was carried out with an Airbus A319 (registration D-AKNU ).

Destinations

Airbus A319-100 of Germanwings in Stuttgart

Germanwings served over 130 destinations in Germany , Europe and North Africa from its locations in Düsseldorf , Berlin-Tegel , Dortmund , Hamburg , Hanover , Cologne / Bonn , Munich , Nuremberg and Stuttgart .

fleet

Germanwings Airbus A320-200

Fleet at the time of cessation of operations

In March 2020, the Germanwings fleet consisted of 34 aircraft with an average age of 15.6 years:

Aircraft type number ordered Remarks Seats
Airbus A319-100 26th on behalf of Eurowings ; four inactive 144/156
Airbus A320-200 8th on behalf of Eurowings 174/180
total 34 -

At the time of the cessation of operations, Germanwings operated with 7 machines from Cologne , 5 machines each from Stuttgart and Berlin-Tegel , 4 machines from Hamburg , 3 machines from Munich and 1 machine from Dortmund .

Special paints

Germanwings provided some aircraft from its fleet with large advertising or other special paint schemes.

Former special paints

Aircraft type Aircraft registration Painting image
Airbus A319-100 D-AKNF " Park Inn Hotels " Germanwings D-AKNF (aircraft) stuttgart 2008 by-RaBoe-01.jpg
D-AKNI " Hamburg Shopper" Airbus A319 Germanwings D-AKNI.jpg
D-AKNM "Mhhhh, Baden-Württemberg " Airbus A319 (Germanwings) (3554929042) .jpg
D-AKNO " Berlin Bearbus " Germanwings A319 D-AKNO STR.jpg
D-AKNR " Spirit of T-Com " Airbus A319-112, Germanwings JP7526695.jpg
D-AKNS " Spirit of T-Mobile " Airbus A319-112, Germanwings JP5951508.jpg
D-AGWX " Cologne "
Airbus A319-132, Germanwings JP7665372.jpg
Airbus A320-200 D-AIPH " Spirit of Cologne " D-AIPH A320-211 Germanwings (Koln-Bonn) ZRH 17JUN03 (8515614164) .jpg
D-AIQD " Maya the Bee " Airbus 320-200 D-AIQ Barcelona-El Prat (17009102642) .jpg
D-AIQM " Wickie " D-AIQM (16571696453) .jpg

Former fleet

McDonnell Douglas MD-82 of Germanwings in 2007

In the past, the following types of aircraft were used as part of wet lease:

Basic data

Characteristics values
Passengers 7.73 million (2010)
Seat load factor 81.8% (July 2010)
Revenue (in millions of )
2003 150
2004 245
2005 400
2006 560
2007 630
2008 650
2009 522
2010 630
2011 687
2012 990

Frequent flyer program

Under the name “Boomerang Club”, Germanwings started what it claims to be the first frequent flyer program of a low-cost airline - but both V Bird and TUIfly had already offered such programs. Points can also be collected by taking advantage of partner offers. There was criticism of the practices of this program, because in the early years you had to pay five euros registration fee, and the fees for the free flight had to be paid by the travelers themselves.

September 1, German Wings was 2010 Partner of Miles & More of Lufthansa . Analogous to the miles that participants earn on Lufthansa flights, the same mileage values ​​will also apply to the individual booking classes on Germanwings connections in future.

In July 2016, the Boomerang Club frequent flyer program was sold to Eurowings Aviation GmbH , which has been marketing it under the Eurowings brand name since then

Incidents

Trivia

Germanwings headquarters in the Porz-Grengel district of Cologne

From 2009 to 2017 existed Cologne , the German Wings Street . For this purpose, part of the forest road in the Porz-Grengel district was renamed. Since 2017, this part has been called Waldstraße again after the responsible district council did not comply with the request to rename the street Eurowings-Straße.

See also

Web links

Commons : Germanwings  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. germanwings.com - Imprint accessed on October 6, 2017.
  2. a b germanwings.com - data and facts (PDF; 73 kB) as of March 2014.
  3. a b germanwings.com - New Germanwings ( Memento from April 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF file)
  4. Lufthansa gives Germanwings survival guarantee. airliners.de, May 15, 2018, accessed on May 28, 2018.
  5. Germanwings is history. austrianwings.info, October 25, 2015, accessed October 25, 2015 .
  6. tuifly.com - Retrieved from Germanwings on August 4, 2013.
  7. Bonner General-Anzeiger , accessed on October 29, 2017.
  8. a b Lufthansa: take-off permission for price breakers. Manager Magazin , August 19, 2002, accessed July 14, 2013 .
  9. Boom of low-cost airlines: Two new foreign airlines launched. Der Spiegel , October 29, 2003, accessed July 14, 2013 .
  10. Lufthansa: low-cost airline is in the black. Manager Magazin , May 25, 2004, accessed July 14, 2013 .
  11. ^ Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung - low-cost airlines: Germanwings wants to become the second largest airline at Hanover Airport , September 10, 2010.
  12. Göttinger Tageblatt - Lufthansa offshoot: Germanwings hopes for 500,000 passengers in Hanover , January 11, 2010.
  13. n-tv - merger failed , October 22, 2008.
  14. eurowings.de - Eurowings sells Germanwings to Lufthansa, December 2008
  15. Jörg Nauke: Lufthansa leaves Germanwings to Europe. Stuttgarter Zeitung , December 14, 2011, accessed on July 14, 2013 .
  16. ^ The new Germanwings - from July 1, 2013. germanwings.com, accessed on December 26, 2012 .
  17. Claudia Aebersold Szalay: Lufthansa strengthens Germanwings. Neue Zürcher Zeitung , October 11, 2012, accessed on November 1, 2012 .
  18. Germanwings serves Berlin-Tegel again. aero.de, accessed on September 2, 2014 (winter 2012/13).
  19. Graphic on the handover of the LH direct traffic to Germanwings. lufthansa.com, accessed on November 27, 2013 .
  20. ^ The Lufthansa Group - The Way Forward. (PDF) (No longer available online.) Lufthansagroup.com, July 2014, archived from the original on July 14, 2014 ; accessed on July 9, 2014 .
  21. Pilots paralyze Germanwings - new strikes threaten. Reuters , accessed August 29, 2014 .
  22. aero.de - Four airlines help new Eurowings into the air, accessed on October 27, 2015.
  23. aero.de - Eurowings scheme accessed on October 27, 2015.
  24. Germanwings is getting closer to Eurowings. In: airliners.de. August 6, 2018, accessed April 8, 2020 .
  25. Our message to you. (PDF) Eurowings, accessed on April 8, 2020 .
  26. Lufthansa is considering the closure of its Germanwings subsidiary. In: boerse-online.de. April 4, 2020, accessed April 5, 2020 .
  27. Lufthansa Executive Board seems conceptless and overwhelmed. In: vcockpit.de. April 3, 2020, accessed April 6, 2020 .
  28. Group restructuring started: Germanwings is threatened. In: ufo-online.aero. April 3, 2020, accessed April 6, 2020 .
  29. ^ Joint appeal by VC, UFO, Verdi, IGL / TGL and ACA. In: vcockpit.de. April 6, 2020, accessed April 6, 2020 .
  30. Lufthansa - Appeal to humanity and economic reason. In: change.org. Retrieved April 6, 2020 .
  31. Lufthansa Group decides on first restructuring package. In: lufthansagroup.com. April 7, 2020, accessed April 7, 2020 .
  32. DER SPIEGEL: Lufthansa closes Germanwings - DER SPIEGEL - Wirtschaft. Retrieved April 7, 2020 .
  33. D-AKNU from Flightradar 24. In: Flightradar24 . March 24, 2020, accessed April 8, 2020 .
  34. eurowings.com - Our travel destinations , accessed on March 4, 2017.
  35. Eurowings fleet. Retrieved April 8, 2020 .
  36. Eurowings fleet distribution according to bases. Retrieved March 27, 2020 (d).
  37. planespotters.net - Germanwings Fleet Details and History , accessed on May 5, 2017.
  38. MD-80.com - Report on the use of the Boeing 717 at Germanwings. Retrieved October 29, 2017 .
  39. VATISM Network - Analysis of the origin of Germanwings Wetlease. VATISM, April 29, 2010, accessed October 29, 2017 .
  40. md80.com - Report on the use of Nordic Airways-McDonnell Douglas machines at Germanwings. Retrieved October 29, 2017 .
  41. Eurowings Aviation GmbH - partial takeover: Germanwings GmbH. Retrieved January 5, 2019 .
  42. Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger - Germanwings is expanding its Cologne location. August 19, 2009 ( Memento from January 9, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  43. Agenda item 6.18: Motion of the SPD parliamentary group: renaming of Germanwings-Straße In: stadt-koeln.de , accessed on January 18, 2018.
  44. Philipp Haaser: Why the Germanwings-Straße is now called Waldstraße again. In: Kölner Stadtanzeiger. DuMont.next, March 1, 2018, accessed April 28, 2018 .