Germanwings

Early years

In 1997, Eurowings set up a low-cost department, which became a separate company under the name Germanwings on 27 October 2002. On 7 December 2005, the airline signed an agreement to purchase 18 Airbus A319-100 aircraft with a further 12 options, with deliveries scheduled from July 2006 until 2008.

During winter 2004–2005 Germanwings leased two Boeing 717-200s from Aerolíneas de Baleares to test the aircraft type, but no order was made afterwards.

In 2008, initial plans were made to merge Germanwings, Eurowings and TUIfly into one airline to compete with Air Berlin and its subsidiary LTU in the German market and with easyJet and Ryanair on international routes. However, these plans never realized. Instead, Germanwings became a wholly owned subsidiary of Lufthansa on 1 January 2009.

Takeover of Lufthansa routes from 2012

In 2012 Lufthansa announced its plans to transfer point-to-point shorthaul flights operating from cities other than Frankfurt and Munich from Lufthansa to Germanwings. Therefore, the company received a revised corporate design. The transfer of Lufthansa's shorthaul routes occurred between spring 2013 and autumn 2014; Düsseldorf Airport was the last base transferred from March 2014.

As part of the 2013 restructuring and relaunch of Germanwings, around 30 Lufthansa aircraft were to be added to Germanwings' fleet of 33 aircraft. Additionally, the 23 aircraft currently operated by Eurowings for Lufthansa flights not flying out of Frankfurt and Munich were to join Germanwings. The new Germanwings was to operate around 90 aircraft.

The airline has a long-standing dispute with the Vereinigung Cockpit union, which demands a scheme in which pilots can retire at the age of 55 and retain 60% of their pay, which parent Lufthansa insists is no longer affordable. Germanwings pilots staged a nationwide strike in support of their demands in April 2014 which lasted 3 days. The pilots staged a six-hour strike in September 2014. Simultaneous strikes were staged by Lufthansa pilots.

By the end of 2014, all of Lufthansa's national routes and international traffic to and from Germany - except flights to and from Frankfurt and Munich and the routes from Düsseldorf to Newark and Chicago - were transferred to Germanwings. The last route to be transferred was Düsseldorf-Zurich on 8 January 2015.

Integration into Eurowings from 2015

However, the Lufthansa Group announced in January 2015 that the Germanwings brand will be discontinued and replaced by Eurowings starting in autumn 2015. Germanwings will continue to fly on behalf of Eurowings from then on.

On 25 October 2015, Eurowings took over 55 routes previously operated under the Germanwings brand. By April 2016, Eurowings will have taken over several more routes. The first Germanwings bases to be mostly taken over by Eurowings will be Düsseldorf Airport, Hamburg Airport - at both of which Eurowings already operates on behalf of Germanwings - and Cologne Bonn Airport.

Lufthansa announced in October 2015, that Germanwings' own website will be dissolved and redirected to Eurowings by January 2016 as part of their merger. However, Germanwings will continue to operate until further notice without being advertised under its own name anymore. Also since October 2015, Eurowings is solely responsible for all sales under the Germanwings brand. In January 2016, Germanwings' social media profiles, e.g. on Facebook and YouTube, have been renamed to Eurowings while the URL germanwings.com now redirects to eurowings.com. However, Germanwings continues to operate under its own flight numbers but only using the Eurowings brand.

In December 2016, it has been announced that Germanwings will retire 20 aircraft during 2017 without replacement due to Lufthansa's new wet-lease deal with Air Berlin which will also provide services for Eurowings. It has been reported that the Air Berlin aircraft are newer and cheaper to operate than those of Germanwings.

Business trends

Germanwings has been wholly owned by Lufthansa since 1 January 2009; formal reporting since then has been within the Group Accounts. From 2012, Germanwings figures have been reported only within the 'Lufthansa Passenger Airline Group', and have not generally been available separately. The key known trends for Germanwings are shown below (as at year ending 31 December):

In line with Lufthansa's declared business strategy, the transfer of European non-hub traffic from Lufthansa Passenger Airlines to Germanwings continued in 2014 and was completed successfully on 7 January 2015. (The increase in 2013 and 2014 figures was due to this intervening transfer of aircraft and routes from Lufthansa.)

Service concept

Germanwings has offered three fare types since 2013. Basic is no-frills and offers no free catering and only hand luggage. Best includes hold baggage, free snacks and drinks as well as access to some lounges for tier members of Miles&More. Smart and Best more or less correspond to the Lufthansa service offered on the routes taken over by Germanwings. The fleet is only equipped with economy class.

Germanwings offers Sky Bistro (Bord Shop in German), a buy on board food and drinks programme. The airline provides an inflight magazine, a bi-monthly German and English magazine called GW. While the primary editorial focus is rooted in Germanwings destinations, the content is not exclusively about travel.

As for its booking services, Germanwings provides Blind Booking, a unique option that allows passengers to choose one of Germanwings' base airports, select a category of destination (e.g. Party, Gay-friendly or Culture) and then purchase a round-trip ticket via a random lottery process from among the cities in the category. Such tickets are often priced lower than the corresponding ticket to the same destination, and Germanwings e-mails its customers with details of their destination shortly after the purchase.

Codeshare agreements

Germanwings has codeshare agreements with the following airlines:

Fleet

As of February 2017, the Germanwings fleet consists of the following aircraft:

Special liveries

Germanwings did use several different special liveries in the past. Some aircraft had special liveries promoting German cities (e.g. the Bearbus paint scheme inspired by the coat of arms of Berlin), or as advertisements (e.g. a pink livery for T-Mobile). Those were abandoned during the 2013 rebranding.

Incidents and accidents

As of the merger, Germanwings has been involved in one major accident resulting in fatalities, for a total of 150 fatalities.

On 24 March 2015, an Airbus A320-211 with registration D-AIPX was operating Flight 9525 from Barcelona to Düsseldorf when it crashed in the south of France near Digne-les-Bains, with no survivors. The flight was carrying 144 passengers, two pilots and four cabin crew. The French prosecutor, the French and German aviation authorities, and a spokesperson for Germanwings have all said that the crash was intentionally caused by the co-pilot, 27-year-old Andreas Lubitz. Phil Giles, a former investigator with the UK’s Air Accident Investigation Branch, told The Independent on March 29, 2015 that Germanwings (and hence Lufthansa) would have serious questions to answer over the mental state and medical history of this employee. Lubitz took time off from his flight training for several months and informed the Flight Training Pilot School in 2009 of a "previous episode of severe depression". He later completed the training. Prior to his training as a commercial pilot, he was also treated for suicidal tendencies.

Following the accident, EASA (European Aviation Safety Agency) made a recommendation to airlines that two authorized persons must be present in the cockpit at all times. In coordination with the German aviation authority, other German airlines and the German aviation industry association, the airlines of the Lufthansa Group adopted a flightdeck-occupancy procedure requiring the presence of two authorised persons on the flightdeck at all times during flight.